Assessing Cohesion Policy Impacts: Recent Results and Perspectives

This essay surveys the main evolving phases of Cohesion Policy, the empirical nd- ings and some unexplored issues in the literature on the assessment of the Policyʼs effec- tiveness. Studies are rst classi ed into three groups based on the type of evaluation approach adopted: case studies, model simulations and econometric models. We present a detailed clustering of the econometric studies in this subject. These latter are primarily classi ed in relation to the econometric approach adopted, and then by considering their different results in terms of policy effectiveness. Finally, we present some recent works aimed at assessing the impact of EU Cohesion Policy in speci c elds of intervention beyond GDP. In fact, early econometric contributions to the assessment of EU Cohesion Policy were focused mainly on the growth rate of the GDP, leaving its impact on other speci c elds of intervention unexplored. Even more, in recent years a number of stud- ies has stressed the importance of considering the multidimensional nature of social and economic progress, suggesting to extend the scope of analysis beyond the impacts on the production sphere.