Aula Arcari, via Sant'Ignazio 86, Cagliari, 12.20
How does the net impact of the EU Cohesion Policy differ across countries? Evidence from a Spatial RDD

By exploiting the administrative boundaries between Objective 1 and non-Objective 1 regions, this paper estimates the country-specific impact of the EU Cohesion Policy on growth and employment: we perform a Regression Discontinuity Design which compares NUTS-3 areas belonging to the treated and to the not treated side of the boundaries balancing them by means of spatial forcing variables (geographical coordinates). In contrast to the studies that used the GDP threshold of assignment, which can be identified only at EU level with a comparison among regions from any countries in EU, thanks to our novel discontinuity we reproduce the same identification strategy in each single country. Our evidence suggests that the EU aggregated results are attributable to very specific and heterogeneous patterns at country level and that between-countries national-level differences are the real key driver of the Policy impact.

Mara Giua is a research fellow at the Rossi-Doria Center and the Department of Economics of the University Roma Tre.
http://www.centrorossidoria.it/chi-siamo/assegnisti-e-ricercatori/

Anyone interested to have a talk with the seminar speaker should contact Ivan Etzo (etzo@unica.it)