Fostering the endogenous potential development of European regions: a panel data analysis of the cohesion policy on regional convergence over the period 1980-2005
Résumé
This paper investigates whether structural funds policy affects the European economies in such a way that poorer regions catch up with the rich ones, estimating a conditional convergence econometric model. In this model, regional convergence depends on the policy treatment and the regional economic structure, proxied by investment per capita and demographic growth rate. The convergence model is specified in a dynamic paneldata form on a dataset of 191 NUTS II EU14 regions observed over more than 25 years (from 1980 to 2005). A Generalized Method of Moment estimation enables obtaining consistent estimates of the beta-parameter along with estimates of the impact of the regional policies and the regional economic structure on regional growth. The analysis highlights that structural funds have a small but significant impact on Objective1 regions convergence rate, whatever the impact model we designed. Moreover, considering for the spatial dimension of the panel leads a still significant, but less important, impact of structural funds on convergence.