Do EU funds crowd out other public expenditures? Evidence on the additionality principle from the detailed Czech municipalities’ data

European Union (EU) funds flowing into budgets of public sector organizations of its member states should be additional to their nationally funded expenditures. To investigate this additionality principle systematically, we develop a new empirical method. Our main hypothesis is that some of the EU-funded projects are crowding out national public expenditures. Not being able to reject the hypothesis would be consistent with violating the additionality principle. To test the hypothesis, we examine how EU funding translates into actual spending of relatively comparable municipalities of the Czech Republic. We innovatively match the municipal authorities’ budgetary data on EU-funded expenditure projects with their other, nationally funded, expenditures. We find no systemic crowding out of national public expenditures by EU funds at the level of operational programmes in the Czech municipalities’ data, which is consistent with no evidence of violating the additionality principle. Nonetheless, going down to the municipal level enables us to show how the results can pinpoint individual cases of EU fund’s potential mismanagement in Czech municipalities. Overall, we provide the first evaluation of the additionality principle at the level of individual recipients of EU funds and in doing so we develop a methodological approach potentially applicable to other fund recipients.     

高速铁路对欠发达地区可达性影响的空间差异——以哈大与郑西高铁为例

基于时间和经济两种维度,以哈大与郑西两条欠发达地区高铁线路为研究对象,利用加权平均旅行时间与经济潜力综合测度两条高铁运营前后沿线城市可达性的动态变化及空间差异,结果表明：高铁开通后,沿线城市可达性明显改善,哈大高铁可达性综合改善程度强于郑西,且内部可达性变率相对差异较小;哈大高铁可达性变率呈线路中间大、首末小的态势,郑西高铁经济潜力变率呈自东向西递减趋势;哈大高铁明显提升了吉林南部与辽宁北部的核心地位,可达性获益的空间集聚效应凸显;郑西高铁显著拉近了中原和关中地区,以郑州、洛阳、西安为核心的“古都经济带”初露端倪,未来可向西对接“丝路经济带”,打造沟通中国与欧亚大陆跨国经济走廊。     

Does EU cohesion policy work? Theory and evidence

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that “Objective 1” funds are characterized by strong spatial externalities and a positive and concave effect on the growth of GDP per worker, which reaches a peak at the ratio funds/GDP of approximately 3 percent and becomes non‐significant after 4 percent. “Objective 2” and “Cohesion” funds have nonsignificant effects, while all the other funds exert a positive and significant effect, but their size is very limited. EU Cohesion Policy, moreover, appears to have increased its effectiveness over time. In the period 2000–2006 Objective 1 funds are estimated to have a median multiplier equal to 1.52, and to have added 0.37 percent to the GDP per worker growth. Overall, in the period 1991–2008, funds are estimated to have added 1.4 percent to the median annual growth, and to have reduced regional disparities of 8 basis points in terms of the Gini index.     

沿海铁路建设与苏北鲁南地区的发展

交通条件的改善对支撑区域经济发展和构建最优的空间结构起着重要的作用,其中各种交通方式的优化组合和区域发展主轴线的构建对驱动区域经济的快速发展更有着决定性的意义。本文以苏北和鲁南地区为例,借沿海铁路建设带来的发展契机,通过对该地区交通网络演变规律和发展现状的分析,探讨了当前制约该地区发展的关键因素,并结合空间结构理论,给出了促进该地区经济发展的具体思路。     

基于行业差异的欧盟旅游与经济增长关系研究

作为旅游经济领域内的热点问题,旅游发展和经济增长间的关系在学界一直未能形成较为统一的结论。鉴于将旅游业作为单一行业来研究其和整体经济间关系可能是分歧产生的重要原因,本文使用异质面板协整技术实证检验了欧盟4个核心旅游行业与经济增长之间的关系。研究结果表明,欧盟各旅游行业与经济增长之间均存在长期协整关系;进一步格兰杰检验的结果揭示了欧盟航空、住宿和旅行社等3个核心旅游行业与经济增长之间存在双向因果关系,但影响程度各异。住宿业与航空、旅行社和餐饮业间表现为显著的双向促进发展关系。