The impact of place‐based policies on interpersonal income inequality
研究了欧盟凝聚力政策对意大利地区人际收入不平等的影响，发现政策终止后基尼系数下降，但这是由高收入者向中间收入移动所致，提示减少区域差距可能加剧人际不平等。
Abstract This paper assesses the causal impact of the European Union (EU) cohesion policy, aimed at reducing the regional divide within the EU, on interpersonal income inequality in receiving areas. We leverage a severe contraction of financing, which took place in an Italian region in 2007, and adopt a difference‐in‐discontinuity empirical design to show that the Gini index (of income) at the municipality level goes down because of the end of the policy. The improvement is due to the move of top earners towards the centre of the distribution. The reduction in the Gini indicator is confirmed even if we resort to a region‐level analysis. Our results suggest that from a policy perspective, reducing spatial inequality might come with the cost of worsening inequality across individuals.