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Evaluation experience from the EU Cohesion Policy
Kohezijska politika Europske unije osmišljena je s ciljem mobilizacije raznolikih institucionalnih aktera i socioekonomskih skupina, no pitanje je kako se to odvija u nacionalnim okvirima. Drugim riječima, jesu li se i u kojoj mjeri nacionalne institucije, naviknute na upravljanje nacionalnim sektorskim politikama (ovdje najvažnije politikom regionalnog razvoja), mogle prilagoditi pravilima provedbe kohezijske politike Europske unije iz 1989. i njihovim kasnijim nadopunama iz 1993. Pri tome ključna su četiri aspekta u strukturiranju institucionalnih odgovora država članica te subnacionalnih tijela na nove odredbe kohezijske politike. To su: stvaranje institucija (engl. institution building) u slučajevima gdje nisu postojale odgovarajuće institucije, zatim jačanje institucionalnih sposobnosti (engl. institutional capacity) kao povećanje sposobnosti postojećih institucija zbog preuzimanja novih funkcija i procesa, upravni kapacitet (engl. administrative capacity) podrazumijeva nužnost povećanja efektivnosti i efikasnosti upravljanja procesom kohezijske politike te višerazinsko upravljanje (engl. multilevel governnace) kao suradnja različitih institucionalnih razina i socioekonomskih skupina u pripremi i provedbi politike.
The European Union (EU), especially in the context of Cohesion Policy (CP), has played a crucial role in developing and promoting policy evaluation practices across its Member States. Evaluation systems across the Member States have been established to assess CP investments. Remarkably, the use of evaluation research and its contribution to stimulating policy learning has remained a “black box.” To address this issue, this article aims to develop a novel framework centered around four conditions for evaluation‐based policy learning, namely: (1) policy relevance, (2) resources and organizational settings, (3) quality of evaluation, and (4) evaluation culture. These conditions are retrieved from the existing literature on policy evaluation and applied to the six‐country cases across the EU. The findings suggest how loosening the formal EU evaluation requirements could affect policy learning in the Member States.
Public managers require different types of knowledge to run programs successfully. This includes knowledge about the context, operational know-how, knowledge about the effects, and causal mechanisms. This knowledge comes from different sources, and evaluation studies are just one of them.
This article takes the perspective of knowledge users. It explores to what extent evaluation is a useful source of knowledge for public managers of cohesion policy. Findings are based on an extensive study of 116 Polish institutions: surveys with 945 program managers, followed by 78 interviews with key policy actors. The article concludes that: (a) utility of evaluation studies, in comparison to other sources of knowledge, is limited, (b) evaluation reports are used to some extent as a source of knowledge on effects and mechanisms, however, (c) "effects" are shallowly interpreted as smooth money spending, not socio-economic change.
In conclusion this article offers practical ideas on what evaluation practitioners could do to make evaluation more useful for knowledge users in policy implementation.
To what extent do regions in different member states of the European Union benefit from Cohesion Policy? A spatial regression discontinuity design approach offers distinct but fully comparable estimates of regional impacts for each individual member state. Cohesion Policy has a positive European Union-wide impact on regional growth and employment. However, a large part of the growth bonus is concentrated in Germany, while impacts on employment are confined to the UK. The picture in Southern Europe is less rosy. In Italy, positive impacts on employment do not survive the Great Recession, while in Spain economic growth benefits are limited to the recovery period.
Policy evaluation has grown significantly in the EU environmental sector since the 1990s. In identifying and exploring the putative drivers behind its rise – a desire to learn, a quest for greater accountability, and a wish to manipulate political opportunity structures – new ground is broken by examining how and why the existing literatures on these drivers have largely studied them in isolation. The complementarities and potential tensions between the three drivers are then addressed in order to advance existing research, drawing on emerging empirical examples in climate policy, a very dynamic area of evaluation activity in the EU. The conclusions suggest that future studies should explore the interactions between the three drivers to open up new and exciting research opportunities in order to comprehend contemporary environmental policy and politics in the EU.
Cohesion policy is one of the European Union’s central spending policies, which is characterized by path-dependency and only incremental change. However, the policy has been reformed significantly in 2013. This case study sets out to trace this ground-breaking and significant reform in a fairly path-dependent environment by using Kingdon’s multiple streams approach (MSA).The approach is adapted to the characteristics of policy-making in the European Union, the particularities of the Union’s multilevel governance with its institutionalized and well-practised policy-making and almost predictable policy windows. The modified approach helps to separate two windows of opportunity with two different policy entrepreneurs. The first agenda window with the European Commission as entrepreneur prepared the grounds for the decision window with an entrepreneurial group of Member States. The second coupling reframed and refocused the proposals of the agenda coupling and linked cohesion policy more closely with the Union’s economic policy co-ordination.
The study contributes to underdeveloped knowledge on effects of SME policies in Central and Eastern Europe. We evaluate two Czech credit guarantee schemes funded from EU funds during years 2007-2013. We conduct micro-econometric firm-level impact evaluation based on propensity score matching approach. We estimate Average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) for six financial outcome variables (total assets, tangible fixed assets, personnel costs, sales, price-cost-margin and return on assets) measuring firm´s competitiveness. Two years after the program, no statistically conclusive results were obtained for the most of the outcome variables. We found only a positive change in tangible fixed assets for the program participants. However, we cannot say, that the supported firms would be better off, compared to those non-supported in a short-term. Our analysis shows that without reliable data gathered by public sector authorities, no rigorous evaluations can be made and thus no evidence driven policies can be formed.
The latest successive enlargements to Central and Eastern European countries and their differentiated convergence raise the question of the effectiveness of the European structural funds that have been greatly enjoyed by such countries. The literature on this question is nevertheless not unanimous. I therefore offer an analysis of the cohesion policy and its role in regional growth specifically in Central and Eastern Europe, using a method developed in spatial analysis, namely, GWR (geographically weighted regression) at the NUTS 3 level. My findings reveal the existence of a multipolar convergence. The differentiated spatial variations of the influence of European funds on regional economic growth call for reorientation of the cohesion policy, especially in favor of a more territorialized policy..
The EU Cohesion Policy requires the interaction of the public, private and non-profit sectors in policy making. The Czech Republic presents an ideal case study for identifying the major obstacles to the successful implementation of this approach since Czech citizens evaluate Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in their country as having less capacity to influence policies at the lowest level than NGOs in any other EU member state. The goal of the study is to identify and explain the determinants of success and failure regarding NGOs' participation in designing public programmes. The methodology includes a combination of in-depth interviews with NGO representatives and public servants, a review of official documents, a focus group, and a stakeholders' review of the study's conclusions. The main obstacles to the implementation of the partnership principle are the following: NGOs' insufficient capacities and responsibilities; fluctuations in the participation of public servants and NGO representatives; dependence of partnership on personal contacts; NGOs' late entry and the nonconsultative, informative character of the partnership.
Purpose: The objective of this study was to empirically observe, whether the Czech companies, which have received a financial subsidy from the European Regional Development Fund during the period of years 2008-2013, reported after the end of the programme better financial results.
Design/methodology/approach: For each of the supported companies, authors have collected financial indicators obtained from their profit and loss statements and balance sheets (N=140, 69% of the supported companies in the sector). The three key performance indicators (KPIs) were selected to measure the firm profitability: return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and price-cost margin (PCM). Authors employed t-test to initially compare the periods before the firms received the subsidy (2005-2007) and after the end of the programme (2014-2015).
Findings: The results of the paired t-tests have not found any statistically significant differences for the variables price-cost margin (PCM) and return on equity (ROE). However, the statistically significant difference was obtained for the return on assets (ROA), which suggested that the supported firms reported after the end of programme lower return on assets (ROA).
Research/practical implications: Our initial observation suggests that participation of the Czech food companies in the Operational Programme Enterprise and Innovation did not lead to the better financial performance. However, our results need to be taken as preliminary, since more rigorous approach towards the programme evaluation needs to be implemented. This approach would require employment of the counterfactual analysis (CFA), taking into account large heterogeneity across the companies. CFA would also allow us to compare the supported companies with the similar firms present in the economy. Originality/value: Presented study exploits unique firm level dataset and contributes to the Czech regional knowledge by the first observation of the short-term effects of the participation in the public programme.
An evaluation culture in the EU Cohesion Policy is developing. It applies a more rigorous approach than few years ago. Although the European Commission is introducing a requirement for impact evaluations, such evaluations are still rare. Employment is one of the core objectives of EU policies. Application of the counterfactual impact evaluation on the EU Cohesion Policy enables the inquiry into how one of the most important EU policies operates. The analysis comprises a sample of 373 supported and 202 rejected applicants. The appraisal experts´ approach to applications is used as an instrumental variable to estimate the impacts of the assistance from the European Social Fund in Czech companies through interventions aimed at training of employees. The results indicate positive effects of the European Social Fund’s assistance in companies even one year after the support ended. The estimates vary between 3 838 and 5 513 created or saved jobs.
The attention and support that R&D receives from economists and politicians reflects its importance as a key element of competitiveness and growth in advanced economies. But the real effect of policy upon public support depends on the technological level and structure of the economy and on the ability of beneficiaries to use the support effectively. We should also ask whether the current measurement of R&D outcomes and their subsequent assessment actually reflects real-world situations. The paper presents results of a research focused on the effectiveness of R&D subsidies on the performance of private enterprises in the Czech Republic. We deliberately focus on financial data and compare beneficiaries with unsuccessful applicants using techniques of counterfactual analysis. Although supported actors exhibit higher values of certain variables like assets, personnel expenditures or value added, these cannot be claimed to be the result of R&D support. These findings suggest the very limited effectiveness of R&D support to private actors in the Czech Republic, at least in the short run.
This paper analyzes the effects of an investment subsidy program for small- and medium-sized enterprises in Flanders from 2004 to 2009. The subsidies were awarded according to a ranking system that favored young, growing and productive firms with a strong cash flow, granting subsidies to the highest scoring firms until the depletion of funds. The nature of this allocation system creates a sharp cutoff in granting the subsidy according to the score, allowing us to estimate the causal impact of the subsidies using a regression discontinuity design. We find a positive effect on firm-level investment, employment, output and productivity for the firms that were granted the subsidy, but only for the small firms. However, the effect is small relative to the cost of the subsidy.
The quality of public decision making depends significantly on the quality of analysis and advice provided through public organizations. Champions of "evidence-informed" policy making claim that rigorous evaluation practices can significantly improve attainment of cost-effective outcomes. After decades of experience, performance information is more sophisticated, but evaluation practices and capabilities vary enormously. Public agencies gather and process vast amounts of information, but there has been little analysis of how this information is actually utilized for policy and program improvement. This article examines how government agencies use evidence about policy and program effectiveness, with attention to four themes: (1) the prospects for improving "evidence-informed" policy making, (2) the diversity of practices concerning evidence utilization and evaluation across types of public agencies and policy arenas, (3) recent attempts to "institutionalize" evaluation as a core feature of policy development and budget approval, and (4) the relationships between public agencies and nongovernmental sources of expertise.
Political developments in South Eastern Europe raise serious doubts about the prospects for the effectiveness of the European Union's external democracy promotion via political conditionality. They make it questionable whether the European Union (EU) can repeat its success story as it is widely acknowledged in Central Eastern Europe. With reference to countries characterized by legacies of ethnic conflict, this article shows that incentive-based instruments only trigger democratic change if certain domestic preconditions are met. It will be argued that if national identity runs counter to democratic requirements, this will ‘block’ compliance by framing it as inappropriate action. The argument is empirically demonstrated using the example of one of the most problematic issue areas in Croatia, for which the EU has only partially succeeded in bringing about democratic change: the prosecution of war crimes.
Full text version: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501760903561450
This paper uses a conditional-convergence econometric model to investigate whether cohesion policy affects European economies. Its main contribution is to consider both spatial and temporal dynamics in assessing the impact of European cohesion policy. Econometric estimations rely on a dataset of 143 EU-14-NUTS-1/NUTS-2 regions from 1980 to 2005. The results suggest that Objective 1 programmes have a direct effect on regional gross domestic product per capita growth rates, whereas total Structural Funds do not. Moreover, consideration of the spatial dimension of the panel brings to light a still significant, but less important, impact of Structural Funds.
As many reviews of results-based performance systems have noted, a weak evaluative culture in an organization undermines attempts at building an effective evaluation and/or results management regime. This article sets out what constitutes a strong evaluative culture where information on performance results is deliberately sought in order to learn how to better manage and deliver programs and services. Such an organization values empirical evidence on the results it is seeking to achieve. The article outlines and discusses practical actions that an organization can take to build and support an evaluative culture.
Given the increasing share of the EU budget devoted to Regional Policy, several studies have tried to identify the impact of structural funds on economic growth. However, so far no consensus has been reached. We assess Regional Policy effects through a non-experimental comparison group method, the regression discontinuity design, and a novel regional dataset for the 1994–2006 period. We exploit the allocation rule of EU transfers by comparing regions with a per capita GDP level just below the eligibility threshold (75% of EU average) with those just above. Our findings show a positive impact of EU Regional Policy on economic growth.
Dado que la proporción del presupuesto de la UE destinada a políticas regionales es cada vez mayor, varios estudios han tratado de identificar el impacto de los fondos estructurales en el crecimiento económico. Sin embargo, hasta ahora no se ha logrado un consenso. Evaluamos aquí los efectos de políticas regionales por medio de un método de grupo de comparación no experimental, el diseño de regresión en discontinuidad, y un conjunto de datos regionales no usados hasta ahora para el período 1994–2006. Aprovechamos la regla de asignación de transferencias de la UE mediante la comparación de las regiones con un PIB per cápita por debajo del umbral de elegibilidad (75% del promedio de la UE) con las que están inmediatamente por encima. Nuestros resultados muestran un impacto positivo de las políticas regionales de la UE en el crecimiento económico.
Administrative capacities are among the crucial factors influencing success in European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy absorption. The current research concentrates on the public sector, while administrative capacities in other stakeholders are omitted. Our research focuses on whether local stakeholders from civil society have sufficient capacities to contribute effectively and efficiently to EU Cohesion Policy implementation. We performed our research on 57 integrated urban development plans in Czechia and Portugal and conducted 33 interviews with local entities. The results indicate a different level of capacity not only between the public and civil society organizations but also within civil society. KEYWORDS administrative capacities; Cohesion Policy; integrated urban development plans; civil society organizations; co-production JEL D78, H11, O21, R58 HISTORY
The synthesis chapter offers a comparative analysis of national chapters, including results for the institutionalisation of evaluation within the political society, civil society and the system of professions. While evaluation is very rarely implemented on the primary level of legislation, there is a certain number of countries with decrees and regulations at the secondary level. In European civil societies, evaluation is still an exotic topic with only limited activities. In opposite, the institutionalisation of evaluation as a profession is well developed in some bigger countries. In general, the institutionalisation is still weak and depending too much on individual activities. The professional system is widely disconnected from the political and social systems. Its development is not driven by demand but by inherent forces of the evaluation community. In opposite, the institutionalisation and use of evaluation is primarily policy driven, linked to new public management and the international pressure from EU institutions.
The 2015 Better Regulation Reform is recognized as one of the key changes of Juncker’s European Commission, but its political implications remain understudied. Despite its appearance as a seemingly technical evaluation system, we present the reform as a political instrument that enhances the strategic actorness of the Commission, both internally and vis-à-vis the member states. Drawing on primary documents and 16 expert interviews with senior Commission officials, we demonstrate that the Better Regulation Reform enhances the Commission’s ability to act as a unified actor (internal coherence) and contributes to its ability to justify its actions vis-à-vis the member states (external robustness). The article contributes to the literature on international public administration in general and the EU in particular, as it demonstrates how institutional policies may enhance bureaucratic influence. We reveal how an international public administration can conform to member statesʼ demands for more accountability and transparency yet design the overall evaluation system in a way that contributes to its strategic actorness.
In the context of proposals for a stronger focus on results in Cohesion Policy post-2020, it is necessary to strengthen the link between interventions and evidence on effectiveness. This paper argues that growth regressions and regression discontinuity analysis focusing on regional growth do not provide sufficient detail to support policy-makers in intervention design. A more nuanced picture would be achieved by unpacking intervention in different policy areas at the micro-level and analyzing the channels through which policy contributes to economic growth. The paper reviews the main direct and indirect transmission channels in three areas: research and innovation; support to enterprises; and infrastructure. In this respect, impact evaluations at beneficiary and, in particular, firm level offer a rich potential source of evidence and need to be systematically built into data collection and evaluation of post-2020 Cohesion Policy.
The impact of European Cohesion Policy in different contexts. Regional Studies. Cohesion Policy, an important pillar of the European Union, has always been closely scrutinized and subject to debate because of the size of the budget and supranational role of the European Commission. Recent research has acknowledged that the impact of Cohesion Policy is far from uniform; academic interest has shifted away from attempts to assess its ‘total impact’ towards an emphasis on the ‘conditioning factors’ that explain where, when and how policy is effective. This provides insights that can contribute to policy design. The five papers in this thematic issue contribute to this research agenda by showing in what contexts and under what conditions Cohesion Policy can be more effective.
The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.
The use of territorial impact assessment procedures is gaining increasing relevance in the European Union policy evaluation processes. However, no concrete territorial impact assessment tools have been applied to evaluating EU cross-border programmes. In this light, this article provides a pioneering analysis on how to make use of territorial impact assessment procedures on cross-border programmes. More specifically, it assesses the main territorial impacts of the Inner Scandinavian INTERREG-A sub-programme, in the last 20. years (1996-2016). It focuses on its impacts on reducing the barrier effect, in all its main dimensions, posed by the presence of the administrative border. The results indicate a quite positive impact of the analysed cross-border cooperation programme, in reducing the barrier effect in all its main dimensions. The obtained potential impact values for each analysed dimension indicate, however, that the 'economy-technology' dimension was particularly favoured, following its strategic intervention focus in stimulating the economic activity and the attractiveness of the border area.
The first article in this series traces the initial development of the concept of evaluation use. As a field, evaluation has always paid attention to the potential for use, both in decision-making and in changing people’s thinking. The broad history of the field as we know it today stemmed from two streams: one focused on tests and measurement, primarily in education, and a second focused on social research methods, primarily concerning knowledge utilization. Evaluation use had its roots in both streams, resulting in three broad categories for discussing the use of evaluation findings: instrumental use, conceptual use or enlightenment, and symbolic use. The additional category of process use, added years later, highlighted the potential utility of people’s participation in the evaluation process.
European Union Cohesion Policy and Spain: a territorial impact assessment. Regional Studies. This article examines the territorial impacts of European Union Cohesion Policy in Spain in the first four programming phases (1989–2013). It makes use of a multidimensional and multi-vector territorial impact assessment (TIA) procedure, which goes beyond the common socio-economic and environmental policy evaluation procedures by including elements related to territorial governance and spatial planning. Briefly, the assessment indicated a positive territorial impact of Cohesion Policy in Spain. However, the overall impact suggested several shortcomings, mostly related to a lack of long-term territorial planning vision, and to a ‘price to pay’ for a young-democratic society.
This paper looks at the European Union as a laboratory to study how ‘spatially-targeted’ policies (i.e. the EU Cohesion and Rural Development Policies) interact with sectoral ‘spatially-blind’ policies (i.e. the Common Agricultural Policy - CAP), jointly shaping regional growth dynamics. The analysis of the drivers of regional growth shows that the EU Regional Policy has a positive influence on economic growth in all regions. However, its impact is stronger in the most socio-economically advanced areas and is maximised when its expenditure is complemented by Rural Development and CAP funds. The top-down funding of the CAP seems to be able to concentrate some benefits in the most deprived areas of the Union. This suggests that bottom-up policies are not always the best approach to territorial cohesion. Top-down policies may – in some cases – be effective in order to channel resources to the most socio-economically deprived areas. Territorial cohesion requires the flexible integration and coordination of both bottom-up and top-down approaches.
Theoretically, ex-post legislative (EPL) evaluations play an important role in the European regulatory cycle. By critically assessing the administration, compliance or outcomes of legislation, they may allow for learning and inform enforcement. At the same time, the European Commission may have incentives not to evaluate, as EPL evaluations may lead to undesired policy change or repeal. Furthermore, the development of systematic, high-quality EPL evaluations is threatened by more technical problems in the sphere of evaluability. Hence, the odds are against the systematic production of high-quality evaluations in the European Union (EU). This article assesses this argument by conducting a meta evaluation of the coverage and quality of ex-post legislative evaluations by the European Commission, using two novel datasets. The main findings are that EPL evaluation coverage indeed is patchy, with no clear upward trend in recent years. EPL evaluation is primarily a matter of legislative obligation instead of own initiative. There is great scope, finally, for enhancing the quality of EPL evaluations, by improving methodological quality, stakeholder involvement and transparency.
Strengthening economic, social, and territorial cohesion is a central objective of the European Union. However, disparities between European regions are considerable, and there are doubts as to whether they are likely to be attenuated. In recent years, there has been a growing body of literature that examines the effectiveness of the European Unions funds for promoting growth and reducing asymmetries among members. We contribute to this literature by examining the conditions under which the European Unions financial aid may be affecting regional growth. We explore the interactions between transfers and income and other regional characteristics, such as human capital or innovation. We apply this study to a panel of 137 European regions, covering the period from 1995 to 2009. Our conclusions suggest a positive and significant marginal impact of funds only in regions with low levels of human capital and innovation. © 2015 Journal of Economics Issues/Association for Evolutionary Economics.
This article investigates the European Union’s evaluation system and its conduciveness to evaluation use. Taking the European Commission’s LIFE programme as its case, the article makes an empirical contribution to an emerging focus in the literature on the importance of organization and institutions when analyzing evaluation use. By focusing on the European Union’s evaluation system the article finds that evaluation use mainly takes place in the European Commission and less so in the European Parliament and the European Council. The main explanatory factors enabling evaluation use relate to the system’s formalization of evaluation implementation and use; these factors ensure evaluation quality, timeliness and capacity in the Commission. At the same time, however, the system’s formalization also impedes evaluation use, reducing the direct influence of evaluations on policy-making and effectively ‘de-politicizing’ programme evaluations and largely limiting their use to the level of programme management.
Despite the prevalence of R&D support programs, evaluation studies based on explicit differences in support allocation are rare. In this paper, the identification of the causal effect of R&D support on company performance is based on geographic variation in government funding arising from a population-density rule. I find positive impacts on R&D investment, employment, and sales among the participants who were granted an R&D subsidy as a result of additional aggregate R&D support funding in their region. Although there are no instantaneous impacts on productivity, the study provides evidence of long-term productivity gains.
This article examines the territorial impacts of the EU Cohesion Policy in Portugal, between 1990 and 2010, at the national level. To reach some conclusions, after a brief overview of the existing literature on territorial impact assessment (TIA) procedures, we present the main features of a proposed TIA technique, which we called TARGET_TIA, and applied to our study case. This analysis permitted us to go beyond the general scope of the EU Cohesion Policy evaluations, which concentrate mainly on the socioeconomic and environmental dimensions, by placing on evidence other key-territorial dimensions, such as Territorial Governance/Cooperation and Polycentricity. Findings indicate that, in general, the EU Cohesion Policy had positive territorial impacts in Portugal, namely by supporting the construction of absent and necessary physical infrastructures. However, the lack of spatial planning and strategic vision limited a more effective and efficient use of Cohesion Funds in Portugal.
Strengthening social, economic and territorial cohesion is a central objective of the European Union (EU) and the Structural Funds reflect the main financial effort of the EU to pursue this goal. So far we have gone through four programming periods; to what extent the EU Funds have become more effective in promoting growth and reducing the disparities between EU Member countries is a matter of concern. We investigate the existence (or not) of learning effects and efficiency improvements following the reforms of Regional Policy. The study is applied to data from EU regions (EU12) in the most recent programming periods where data are available. The results suggest an improvement of the Funds efficiency in growth in 2000–2006 when compared to the previous programming period. Moreover, the returns from investments of Funds tend to be higher in richer, higher-educated and more innovative regions. Finally, the Cohesion group has not been able to transform the large transfers received into additional growth.
Cohesion Policy accounts for the largest area of expenditure in the EU budget. Because of its scope and redistributive nature, evaluation is particularly important. Policy analysis tends to overlook the evaluation stage. Few empirical studies seek to apply theory to EU policy evaluation. This article questions the relevance and usefulness of theorizing evaluation practice, exploring positivist, realist, and constructivist perspectives upon approaches to evaluating Structural Funds Programmes. It illustrates how political science theories can provide scholars with useful insights into the way EU policy evaluation is carried out. It develops a toolkit for analyzing real-world approaches to evaluation and then applies it to three separate Cohesion Policy programmes. The analysis shows how, from a theoretical perspective – and contrary to the mixed methods rhetoric of the European Commission – positivism remains the dominant approach when evaluating the Structural Funds and considers why this is so, identifying the ability to demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness, cost, influence, and evaluation culture as key characteristics.
This article draws on the concept of Europeanization to assess the EU cohesion policy’s capacity to promote inclusive regional governance and cooperation in regional development initiatives in Central and Eastern European countries. EU cohesion policy is often credited with improving cooperation and coordination in the delivery of the regional development policy through the application of multi-level governance enshrined in the partnership principle. By imposing a close partnership among a variety of actors, cohesion policy has the capacity to alter domestic relations between the centre and the periphery, and to create a broader scope for regional and bottom-up involvement in economic development policy. However, a lack of tradition of decentralization and collaborative policy-making, as well as a limited capacity of sub-national actors, can result in uneven outcomes of the application of the partnership principle across countries and regions. This raises questions about the transferability of the pa
This article examines the role and use of discourse as a means of affecting EU cohesion policy reform. A discursive shift is traced to a place-based narrative, which sought to re-legitimize and reconnect the policy with its foundational principles during the post-2013 policy review. It is argued that the impact of the narrative on the Commission's proposals has been only partially effective owing to deep-rooted ideational, interest-driven and organizational resistance and tensions relating to the policy's objectives, governance and relationship with Europe 2020. Implications are drawn for ideational analysis in the EU.
Cohesion policy is by far the largest development policy of the EU. The present paper examines the debates regarding place-neutral versus place-based policies for economic development. Many of the previously accepted arguments have been called into question by the impacts of globalisation and a new response to these issues has emerged, a response both to these global changes and also to non-spatial development approaches. The study unveils that the serious limitations in the availability of evidence on cohesion policy results have certainly played a relevant role in discouraging public debate, as have the limitations of the reporting system.
The paper examines the debates regarding place‐neutral versus place‐based policies for economic development. The analysis is set in the context of how development policy thinking on the part of both scholars and international organizations has evolved over several decades. Many of the previously accepted arguments have been called into question by the impacts of globalization and a new response to these issues has emerged, a response both to these global changes and also to nonspatial development approaches. The debates are highlighted in the context of a series of major reports recently published on the topic. The cases of the developing world and the European Union are used as examples of how in this changing context development intervention should increasingly focus on efficiency and social inclusion at the expense of an emphasis on territorial convergence and how strategies should consider economic, social, political, and institutional diversity in order to maximize both the local and the aggregate potential for economic development.
The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states from two pools, the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund. The main goal of the associated transfers is to facilitate convergence of poor regions (in terms of per-capita income) to the EU average. We use data at the NUTS3 level from the last two EU budgetary periods (1994-99 and 2000-06). Using generalized propensity score estimation, we analyze to which extent the goal of fostering growth in the target regions was achieved with the funds provided and whether more transfers generated stronger growth effects or not. We find that, overall, EU transfers enable faster growth in the recipient regions as intended, but we estimate that in 36% of the recipient regions the transfer intensity exceeds the aggregate efficiency maximizing level and in 18% percent of the regions a reduction of transfers would not even reduce their growth. We conclude that some reallocation of the funds across target regions would lead to higher aggregate growth in the EU and could generate even faster convergence than the current scheme does.
Naturally, before funding an environmental program on a large scale, decision makers would like to know whether or not a program will be successful in terms of, first, ecological efficacy and, second, economic efficiency. With particular focus on methodological issues regarding the evaluation of environmental programs, this paper provides an introductory and didactic survey of experimental and observational approaches to the evaluation of the ecological efficacy, as suggested by modern evaluation research. While the evaluation of environmental programs on the basis of these approaches is standard in the US, this course outlined by other applied fields, such as labor and health economics, is obviously rather unusual in Germany and other EU countries. We would like to emphasize that, whenever possible, one should consider conducting an experimental study: In an ideal experiment with a randomized assignment into treatment and control groups, the simple difference in mean outcomes across both groups would yield an unbiased estimate of the true program effect. When controlled experiments are not a viable option, observational approaches might succeed. In any case, environmental regulators and utilities have to work more closely together with researchers already at the stage of designing the interventions.
The need to engage European research and institutions in the new field of Territorial Impact Assessment, from both a methodological and a procedural perspective, was stated some years ago by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). The necessity of multidimensional evaluation of the likely impact of policies and programmes on the territory - understood as the dimension on which all the other relevant dimensions (economic, social, environmental and cultural) converge and with which they integrate - emerged as a natural consequence of the importance of spatial aspects in the future development of the Union and of widespread preoccupations about certain emerging spatial trends. A proposal for a TIA methodology combining logical consistency vis-à-vis the Union's present institutional and policy guidelines with operational viability is being developed and applied to Trans-European Networks policy of the EU. Territorial impact is linked to an innovative definition of the objective of "territorial cohesion" of the Treaties in terms of territorial efficiency, quality and identity. Utilising sectoral impact studies developed inside the ESPON programme and developing territorial indicators for impact, vulnerability and desirability (territorial utility functions), a multicriteria model (TEQUILA) is implemented on priority projects as defined by the Commission, and results mapped and described for the 1360 NUTS-3 regions of the Union.
One strand of endogenous-growth models assumes constant returns to a broad concept of capital. The author extends these models to include tax-financed government services that affect production or utility. Growth and saving rates fall with an increase in utility-type expenditures; the two rates rise initially with productive government expenditures, but subsequently decline. With an income tax, the decentralized choices of growth and saving are "too low," but if the production function is Cobb-Douglas, the optimizing government still satisfies a natural condition for productive efficiency. Empirical evidence across countries supports some of the hypotheses about government and growth. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
The paper provides a critical assessment of the evaluation of European Union Cohesion policy, focusing on the current regulatory framework, and the difficulties this poses for achieving rigorous and useful evaluation outputs. The paper argues that the evaluation framework for Cohesion policy is limited to three core purposes: accountability, improved planning, and quality and performance, but that it would benefit from widening this to include other functions. The decentralization of evaluation to the Member States means the evaluation of Cohesion policy relies on the presence of a pre-existing evaluation culture and skills base in the regions. Further, obstacles to effective evaluation arise from the lack of data comparability, rigidity of time-scales and a focus on performance approaches.
Counterfactual Impact of Cohesion Policy: Impact and Cost-Effectiveness of Investment Subsidies in Italy (Final Report to DG Regional Policy. Contract no. 2010.CE.16.B.AT.042). European Commission, DG Regional and Urban Policy
ASVAPP, 2012. Counterfactual Impact of Cohesion Policy: Impact and
Cost-Effectiveness of Investment Subsidies in Italy (Final Report to DG Regional
Policy. Contract no. 2010.CE.16.B.AT.042). European Commission, DG Regional
and Urban Policy, Turin.
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Evaluation in Poland: Brief overview of evaluation process of EU Cohesion Policy funds
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- T Gapski
- J Jąkalski
- I Lewandowska
- M Mackiewicz
- E Opałka
- P Strzęboszewski
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Evaluation Systems in the Visegrad Member States
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Counterfactual Impact Evaluation of Cohesion Policy
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