Ricerc@Sapienza

The EU devotes a substantial part of its budget to structural funds aimed at favouring convergence within the Union. However, public regional development banks and the European Investment Bank (EIB) in particular are a crucial pillar of social and economic policy aimed at convergence because, if left unchecked, private financial markets proved a formidable force of divergence.
Knowledge of the impact of the bank¿s interventions is a difficult goal to achieve for various reasons. A brief consideration of the strong divergence in the estimates of investment multipliers can show how the issue can be controversial. Moreover, there is a lack of research on the issue of whether fiscal multipliers may be expected to be significantly higher or lower in laggard regions with respect to the richer areas within a country or a currency union.
To fill this gap, in this project we aim to estimate the impact on activity levels at the regional level of the EIB-financed investment projects. Knowledge of a possibly differentiated impact of its activities could affect the ex-ante evaluations of investment projects by modifying their expected economic returns and indirect effects in terms of impacts on income and employment levels.