This paper investigates the impact of the main criterion employed by the European Commission for the allocation of the largest portion of Structural Funds, based on the threshold of the 75% of European Union (EU) average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. We focus on the 2014–2020 programming period and on EU-15 regions to analyze if this criterion has penalized some of them, as a consequence of the 2004 EU enlargement, which has represented an exogenous shock in the allocation process, due to the economic backwardness of new member states. Through the application of Synthetic Control Methods and Difference-in-Differences estimators at different geographical scales, we show that regions that did not obtain the less developed status in both the programming period 2007–2013 and 2014–2020, but that would have obtained it in the period 2014–2020 without the 2004 EU enlargement, experienced a significantly lower GDP per capita growth between −10.5% and −5.7%. Conversely, territories that in the period 2014–2020 lost the less developed status, previously obtained in the time frame 2007–2013, were not characterized by a significantly lower economic growth, providing some evidence of the effectiveness of the safety net.

中文翻译：

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过早退出和延迟进入欠发达状态：结构性资金配置标准的实证评价

本文基于欧盟 (EU) 人均国内生产总值 (GDP) 75% 的门槛，研究了欧盟委员会分配最大部分结构性基金所采用的主要标准的影响。我们重点关注 2014 年至 2020 年规划期和欧盟 15 国地区，以分析这一标准是否对其中一些地区造成不利影响，因为 2004 年欧盟东扩造成了分配过程中的外生冲击，这是由于经济增长造成的。新成员国的落后。通过在不同地理尺度上应用综合控制方法和双重差分估计量，我们发现在 2007-2013 年和 2014-2020 年规划期间没有获得欠发达地位的地区，但本可以获得欠发达地位的地区在没有 2004 年欧盟东扩的 2014 年至 2020 年期间，人均 GDP 增长率显着降低，介于 -10.5% 至 -5.7% 之间。相反，在 2014 年至 2020 年期间失去了先前在 2007 年至 2013 年期间获得的欠发达地位的地区，并没有出现经济增长显着降低的特点，这为安全网的有效性提供了一些证据。