Macroeconometric models for the evaluation of the European Union’s cohesion policy

Abstract

Cohesion policy plays a very important role in the architecture of public policies of the European Union. The need to verify the correct spending and effectiveness of such a large amount of financial transfers made it necessary the development of what in the jargon has taken place as a "culture of evaluation". Under the pressure of the European Commission, the use of various methods of evaluating the effectiveness of this policy has been promoted. The analysis of these qualitative and quantitative, microeconomic and macroeconomic methods, in particular a comparison between five of the most widely used macroeconometric models, is the main topic of this study.