Promoting investment in sustainable urban development with JESSICA: Outcomes of a new EU policy initiative

Michael Nadler and Claudia Nadler
Additional contact information
Michael Nadler: TU Dortmund University, Germany
Claudia Nadler: RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Urban Studies, 2018, vol. 55, issue 9, 1839-1858

Abstract: Between 2007 and 2015, the European Commission invested €1.846 billion in a new policy initiative called JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas). Since European cities in particular have perceived a shortage of investment dedicated to urban regeneration projects, JESSICA will finance more than 2000 higher risk projects through Urban Development Funds as a financial intermediary in order to create economic stimulus. Moreover, replacing traditional grant funding by revolving financial instruments (loans, guarantees and equity capital) is a central part of the ongoing reform of EU cohesion policy. The special challenge of JESSICA is to combine these financial engineering instruments with integrated urban planning issues in a sustainable fund model. However, it is not yet clear whether this new policy instrument is as effective as European decision-makers believe, because up to now there has been no evaluation available on how successful JESSICA has been in achieving its ambitious objectives. Our empirical analysis is the first one to cover the impact of this innovative EU initiative in all 28 EU member states by making outcomes of the policy change measurable in monetary terms. Since revolving financial engineering instruments are a central part of the Europe2020 strategy, we derive key success factors for sustainable urban finance and give recommendations to adjust the policy instrument in the current programming period as part of the ongoing process of a reformed EU cohesion policy.

Keywords: EU cohesion policy; financial engineering instruments; impact evaluation analysis; integrated urban planning; sustainable finance; æ¬§ç›Ÿå‡ è šæ”¿ç­–ã€; é‡‘èž å·¥ç¨‹å·¥å…·ã€; å½±å“ è¯„ä¼°åˆ†æž ã€; åŸŽå¸‚ç»¼å ˆè§„åˆ’ã€; å ¯æŒ ç»­é‡‘èž (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098017702815 (text/html)

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:sae:urbstu:v:55:y:2018:i:9:p:1839-1858

DOI: 10.1177/0042098017702815

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().