The Article introduces a series of basic notions for understanding how the European Union approaches the General Objective of Social and Economical Cohesion. Starting from a brief outline of Regional Development and of the evolution of the Structural Funds, as instruments for reducing the...

The Article introduces a series of basic notions for understanding how the European Union approaches the General Objective of Social and Economical Cohesion. Starting from a brief outline of Regional Development and of the evolution of the Structural Funds, as instruments for reducing the...

This paper discusses the significance, trends and achievements of the entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprise policy in Andalusia developed with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The lack of entrepreneurial culture and business environment conditions...

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...

In this paper we propose an analysis of policy strategies of operative programmes co-funded by Structural Funds in the current period in the regions eligible for the future Regional Competitiveness and Employment Objective, adopting a forward-looking perspective. We analyse interventions...

Drawing on the experience of Structural Funds, the paper argues that cohesion may be beneficial to growth under certain conditions. It develops some arguments based on recent economic theory and empirical evidence on the trade off between cohesion and growth and draws some lessons for future policy.

The aim of this paper is to give an insight into the link between corruption and the implementation of structural and cohesion funds in Romania and the other Central and Eastern European states (CEE). Although there is a great interest within the mass-media and the civil society for this topic,...

This article investigates the impact of structural funds expenditure on EU regions by estimating a conditional convergence econometric model. According to this model, regional convergence is affected by both the policy treatment and the regional economic structure proxied by the agriculture...

On May 1st 2004, 10 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries joined the EU and became fully eligible for communitarian financial support. While the conditions for eligibility are the same, at regional level CEE territories are characterized by very different socioeconomic settings. In...

This paper examines the arguments underpinning the smart specialisation concept, an idea which originally emerged from the sectoral growth literature, and one which has recently been applied with to the regional policy context. The shift from a sectoral to a regional context appears prima facie...