The asymmetric influence of structural funds on regional growth in Greece

Abstract

In this paper we aim to explore the conditioning effect of structural funds (SF) on regional growth in Greece for the period 1994-2006 by detecting if the ability of regions to convert any financial aid into welfare gains is related to certain regionspecific characteristics. The analysis shows that, albeit that important financial aid has been channelled to the less-developed regions, the most advanced regions seem to have benefited more from it. Furthermore, we divide the SF into expenditure categories and conclude that the SF have a positive impact on growth only for those regions in which the regions' endowments are related to the expenditure received. This interaction of the expenditure categories with the characteristics of the recipient region accentuates the role of the 'identity' of each region to the impact of SF on regional growth, thereby signifying valuable policy implications.

Regional needs, regional targeting and regional growth: an assessment of EU Cohesion Policy in UK regions

“…are less growth-conducive, two recent studies examined specifically the issue of concentration of funds and the relative productivity of investments across axes. Sotiriou and Tsiapa (2015) looked at the case of Greece, finding that growth is faster in regions where the investment mix is related to the local endowments -i.e., that investing in one's own area of specialisation matters, at least for some spending categories.…”

“…5 Based on this, we constructed aggregate measures of commitment allocations along five key investment pillars corresponding to: (1) Transport infrastructure; (2) Business support; (3) Research technological development and innovation (RTDI); (4) Human resources; and (5) Tourism, culture and regeneration. 6 The selection of these pillars has been inspired by macro-aggregations of expenditure categories defined by the European Commission in the two analysed periods, as well as by previous studies considering sub-divisions of structural funds by category (Rodriguez-Pose & Fratesi, 2004;Sotiriou & Tsiapa, 2015) 7 . Following, we calculated the regional investment shares for each of these pillars (fund commitments in the pillar in the region divided by total fund commitments in the region) as well as a measure of concentration of effort (the sum of the squares of these shares based on a Herfindahl index), which we use in our empirical analysis.…”

“…Only a handful of studies exist on this issue, providing mostly indirect evidence on the role of prioritising specific investment axes vis-à-vis balancing expenditures across different policy targets (Rodriguez-Pose & Fratesi, 2004), or on the role of targeting interventions to the local specificities and factor endowments of regions (Sotiriou & Tsiapa, 2015;Crescenzi & Giua, 2016;Crescenzi et al, 2017). 2 In this paper we focus exclusively on the UK context and build on the literature assessing the strategic designs of EU policies to empirically assess not only whether but also how EU funds have contributed to improve the economic performance of UK regions.…”

Perspectives on the future of the EU Cohesion Policy

“…As pointed out by Becker et al (2012), Sotiriou and Tsiapa (2015) or Bourdin (2018), the impact of the EU funds on regional growth is not the same everywhere. One reason for this is that some regions do not only spend money in the sectors most likely to have the best economic returns (infrastructure versus education or R&D), but also on differentials in administrative capacity and regional governance.…”

Trappes de développement et influence de la Politique de Cohésion de l’Union européenne : une exploration géospatiale

“…-2006 et 2007-2013). En effet, de nombreux auteurs ont déjà procédé à un décalage temporel pour éliminer les problèmes potentiels de causalité simultanée et reconnaissent que les investissements publics n'agissent pas instantanément sur la croissance (Mohl et Hagen, 2010 ;Sotiriou et Tsiapa, 2015 ;Mohl, 2016 ;Breidenbach et al, 2016 ;.…”