The growth effect of EU funds – the role of institutional quality

Béla Szörfi, Anna Augusztin, Áron Iker and Anna Monisso

No 3014, Working Paper Series from European Central Bank

Abstract: This paper investigates the growth impact of the EU’s Structural, Cohesion and Pre-accession Funds. We look at a large sample of 27 EU countries and the UK, over a period of 1989 and 2020, essentially covering the full history of these funds. We show that the growth effect of the funds is conditional on institutional quality: the funds contribute to economic growth only in countries with strong institutions: low corruption, strong rule of law, effective governments, and strong regulatory quality.Our research have important messages for the expected economic impact of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). On the one hand, our findings highlight the risk that countries with weaker institutions – that also receive more funds - may use such funds less efficiently or wisely. On the other hand, countries that receive more RRF funds are also expected to introduce more structural reforms, some of which have the potential to improve institutional quality and thereby improve the effectiveness of the RRF and EU funds in general. JEL Classification: O11, O43, O47

Keywords: cohesion funds; economic growth; institutions; structural (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-fdg
Note: 2322646
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20253014

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