The EU cohesion policy in context: does a bottom-up approach work in all regions?

Riccardo Crescenzi and Mara Giua

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper looks at the European Union as a laboratory to study how ‘spatially-targeted’ policies (i.e. the EU Cohesion and Rural Development Policies) interact with sectoral ‘spatially-blind’ policies (i.e. the Common Agricultural Policy - CAP), jointly shaping regional growth dynamics. The analysis of the drivers of regional growth shows that the EU Regional Policy has a positive influence on economic growth in all regions. However, its impact is stronger in the most socio-economically advanced areas and is maximised when its expenditure is complemented by Rural Development and CAP funds. The top-down funding of the CAP seems to be able to concentrate some benefits in the most deprived areas of the Union. This suggests that bottom-up policies are not always the best approach to territorial cohesion. Top-down policies may – in some cases – be effective in order to channel resources to the most socio-economically deprived areas. Territorial cohesion requires the flexible integration and coordination of both bottom-up and top-down approaches.

Keywords: regional policy; European Union; regional growth; bottom-up policies; rural development; common agricultural policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O18 R11 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eur and nep-geo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Published in Environment and Planning A, 1, November, 2016, 48(11), pp. 2340-2357. ISSN: 0308-518X

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66946/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The EU Cohesion Policy in context: Does a bottom-up approach work in all regions? (2016)
Working Paper: EU COHESION POLICY IN CONTEXT: DOES A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH WORK IN ALL REGIONS? (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:66946

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