EU transfers and euroscepticism: can’t buy me love?
利用断点回归方法，研究欧盟凝聚力政策资金对公众态度和政治偏好的影响，发现转移支付缓解了疑欧情绪并减少了对反欧盟政党的支持，且存在互惠效应。
SUMMARY The future of an institution, such as the European Union, ultimately depends on people’s support. This paper investigates whether EU redistributive policies have improved public attitudes towards European integration, both in terms of public opinion and political preferences. We focus on Cohesion Policy funds, whose allocation allows us to single out these effects by means of a regression discontinuity approach. The results show that EU transfers have mitigated the rise of Eurosceptical attitudes and reduced political consensus for anti-EU parties. The effects are homogeneous across different socio-economic groups, including the most disadvantaged ones. The improvement in public support for the EU does not appear to be exclusively a spillover of the positive economic effect of funding; we show evidence suggesting the existence of a ‘reciprocity-effect’ channel, that is, citizens in recipient regions recognize the beneficial role of the EU as the source of funding.