Premature exit from and delayed entrance into the less developed status: An empirical appraisal of the structural funds allocation criterion
评估欧盟结构基金分配标准（以人均GDP低于欧盟平均75%为门槛）在2014-2020年期间对欧盟15国地区的影响，发现2004年欧盟东扩导致一些地区因新成员国经济落后而未能获得欠发达地位，其人均GDP增长因此降低5.7%至10.5%。
Abstract 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.