The unintended effects of the Cohesion Policy: The wealthiest regions attract more EU funds

Abstract

This study explores a new research direction for the European Union’s (EU) Cohesion Policy. Our hypothesis is that regions with a higher GDP per capita are more successful in attracting funding under the EU’s Cohesion Policy than their poorer counterparts. We test our hypothesis based on a new dataset from Romania including all those who have received EU grants. Our research was carried out using three samples. For each sample, we estimated an OLS and an IV regression. The estimations support our hypothesis: GDP per capita has a statistically significant positive effect on the EU funds secured in all three cases.