Different approaches to the analysis of the EU Cohesion Policy: leveraging complementarities for evidence-based policy learning

In view of the increasingly strategic role and spending capacity of EU Cohesion Policy, its impacts and effects have become a subject of intense academic and policy debate. There is no agreement on the capability of the policy to promote economic growth and convergence among European regions, to reduce the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged areas, “to promote the overall harmonious development” of the EU (Art. 158 Treaty on European Union), to reduce disparities between the development levels of the various regions, and to strengthen their economic, social and territorial cohesion. Depending on the conceptual framework and on some key methodological choices, different studies have reached contradictory conclusions (Mohl and Hagen, 2010). Existing research based on ‘traditional’ regression methods concludes that the benefits of this policy are fully maximized only in areas with stronger pre-existing socio-economic conditions and/or when benefiting from favorable policy implementation capabilities. Conversely, with a few exceptions (Becker et al., 2013; Crescenzi and Giua, 2015), existing counterfactual analyses have tried to capture the ‘net’ impact of the policy at the EU level, overlooking the potential heterogeneity across regions that takes center stage in regression analyses.