Cohesion Policy (CP) has been a central economic policy tool of the EU for several decades. In the current context of fundamental challenges facing the EU, and ahead of the next seven-year budgetary cycle, Europe has the opportunity to rethink and reform the EU budget and CP in particular. This...

Independent and high-quality evaluations of government policies are an important input for designing evidence-based policy. Lack of incentives and institutions to write such evaluations, on the other hand, carry the risk of turning the system into a costly beauty contest. We study one of the...

By international comparison as well as compared to other EU policies, the EU‘s Cohesion Policy (CP) evaluation system is far developed and institutionalized. This paper analyses the remaining gaps and shortcomings in the CP evaluation system against principles established by the OECD and...

The EU's Cohesion Policy (CP) intends to promote European economic, social, and territorial cohesion. The policy occupies about a third of the EU budget and it is the most evaluated of all EU policies. With the support of the German Ministry of Finance, two in-depth ZEW research papers by...

In this report we update the quantitative analysis of the PEPP and PSPP conduct and analyze whether reinvestments are actually made in accordance to these claims. In prior versions of our report, we have detected patterns in the net purchases under PEPP and PSPP, which suggested systematic and...

The ECB Council has to take a decision on the future of its asset purchase programmes as the monetary crisis support that was appropriate in the early phase of the pandemic needs to be adjusted to new circumstances. The changing environment is characterized by an advanced recovery from the...

The need to balance austerity with growth policies has put government efficiency high on the economic policy agenda in Europe. Administrative reforms which boost the efficiency of the administration can alleviate the trade-off between consolidation and public service provision. Against such...