In the past years, a large number of evaluations have assessed the impact of European Union?s Cohesion Policy, the largest transnational programme for regional development promotion worldwide. In particular, great attention has been devoted to determine the effectiveness of EU funds in improving...

With the prospective exit of the UK from the European Union, a crucial question is whether EU Structural Funds have been beneficial for the country and which aspects of Cohesion Policy should be maintained if EU funds are to be replaced. This paper addresses this question through a twofold...

Growing Euroscepticism across the European Union (EU) leaves open questions as to what citizens expect to gain from EU Membership and what influences their dissent for the EU integration project. This paper looks at EU Structural Funds, one of the largest and most visible expenditure items in...

Leaving the European Union will entail for UK regions losing access to the EU Cohesion Policy. Have EU funds been effective in the country, and what may be the consequences of an interruption of EU financial support to the UK's poorer regions? This paper studies the impact of 'Objective 1'...

The introduction of Smart Specialisation (S3) as a fundamental pillar of the 2014 reform of the European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy has represented a significant strategic shift in European development intervention. S3 strategies are aimed at mobilising the economic potential of each country and...

This paper investigates the influence of media on the beliefs and perceptions individuals hold, with a focus on crime perceptions. We study the case of Italy, where the majority of television channels have been under the influence of the former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for more than a...

In democracies voters rely on media outlets to learn about politically salient issues. This raises an important question: how strongly can media affect public perceptions? This paper uses a natural experiment – the staggered introduction of the Digital TV signal in Italy – to measure the...

Recent decades have seen major changes to the local media environment in the United States, with the absorption of many formerly independent local TV stations into conglomerates. Using a comprehensive dataset of acquisitions, we examine the effects of ownership by the three largest television...