The response of regional well-being to place-based policy interventions

Antonella Rita Ferrara; Lewis Dijkstra; Philip McCann; Rosanna Nisticó

doi:10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2022.103830

The response of regional well-being to place-based policy interventions

Reg Sci Urban Econ. 2022 Nov:97:None. doi: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2022.103830.

Authors

Antonella Rita Ferrara¹, Lewis Dijkstra², Philip McCann³, Rosanna Nisticó⁴

Affiliations

¹ European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy.
² European Commission, DG for Regional and Urban Policy, Brussels, Belgium.
³ The Productivity Institute, Alliance Business School, University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester M15, United Kingdom.
⁴ University of Calabria, Department of Economics, Statistics and Finance "Giovanni Anania", Ponte Bucci, cubo 1C, Arcavacata di Rende (CS), I-87036, Italy.

Abstract

Enhancing the well-being of its citizens is the central remit of the EU's regional policy, but as yet, there is no analysis of the effects of EU regional policy on local well-being. The aim of this paper is to examine this relationship. To do this, we define a novel regionalised well-being measure and we exploit a dataset on regional expenditure in a continuous treatment framework. Based on both parametric and semi-parametric approaches, our analysis demonstrates that the EU regional development policy does influence regional well-being differently from GDP. We find evidence of a linear monotonic response of well-being growth to total transfers, although this effect varies according to the time lag considered and the level of development of the region.

Keywords: Dose-response function; Generalised propensity score; Regional policy; Well-being.