The Impact of Structural Funds Policy on European Regions Growth. A Theoretical and Empirical Approach Mari-Carmen Puigcerver-Peñalver

In this paper we try to estimate the impact of Structural Funds on the growth rates of Objective 1 European regions during the two …rst Pro-gramming periods (1989-2000). For that purpose, we develop a ”hybrid” model of economic growth that partially endogenizes the rate of tech-nical progress and we test its main implications following a panel data approach. Our results suggest that Structural Funds have positively in-‡uenced the growth process of Objective 1 regions although their impact has been much stronger during the …rst Programming period than during the second. The same quantitative di¤erence between the two Program-ming periods appears on the estimated rates of ¯ ¡ convergence and the catching-up e¤ect