The Impact of European Cohesion Policy. A Study on Italian Regions

The aim of this paper is to provide a contribution to the debate on the effectiveness of cohesion policies in Italy. It focuses on the effects of EU spending on the convergence process across Italian regions from 1996 to 2007. The empirical analysis is based on a neoclassical growth model which is augmented by the amount of Structural Funds spent by each region. The results are as follows: if, on one hand, the EU funds have been distributed in line with the criteria of assigning greater finance to the more backward regions, on the other hand, we reveal that the beneficiary regions have managed these EU resources very differently. Finally, we show that the Structural Funds have contributed, although only to a limited extent, to reduction in the regional divide in terms of GDP pro capita, but they have had no impact on the dynamics of labour productivity