The Effectiveness of Structural Policy in the European Union: An Empirical Analysis for the EU‐15 in 1995–2001*

Maaike Beugelsdijk and Sylvester Eijffinger

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2005, vol. 43, issue 1, 37-51

Abstract: The main aim of structural policy is to decrease the regional disparities within the European Union (EU). In 2004 ten new member countries joined the EU, and it is expected that this enlargement will cause strong regional disparities within the Union. For this reason the distribution of financial support by structural policy will undergo drastic changes. In this study we consider two main themes. First, convergence of the current EU Member States is empirically tested for the period 1995–2001, and the effect of the structural funds in this context is identified. Structural funds do indeed appear to have had a positive impact, and poorer countries (like Greece) appear to have caught up with the richer countries. The importance of the structural funds in this respect therefore cannot be neglected. Second, we touch on the problem of moral hazard and the substitution effect. It may be expected that receivers of structural funds in some cases are not really eligible and may therefore use the funds inefficiently. Our first and preliminary results seem to indicate that the less clean countries (or as we measure it, more ‘corrupt’ countries) of the current EU‐15 do not gain less economic growth from the structural funds. The hypothesis that structural funds contributed to fewer interregional disparities within the current 15 European countries cannot be rejected. This may mean the intended plans of channelling a big share of the funds to the candidate countries in 2007–13 will probably contribute to higher economic growth in these countries.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (68)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-9886.2005.00545.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:43:y:2005:i:1:p:37-51

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().