SPATIAL DISCONTINUITY FOR THE IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF THE EU REGIONAL POLICY: THE CASE OF ITALIAN OBJECTIVE 1 REGIONS*
利用行政边界作为空间断点，估计欧盟区域政策对意大利目标1地区就业的因果效应，发现政策对就业有积极影响且未导致经济活动从非处理区转移。
ABSTRACT The economic impact of the Regional Policy of the European Union is still controversial. This paper exploits administrative boundaries as spatial discontinuity to estimate the causal effect of this policy on the Italian Objective 1 regions’ employment. The analysis, developed both in a border strategy framework (municipalities contiguous to the policy‐change boundary) and with more traditional RDD models balanced by spatial forcing variables (centroids’ distance and coordinates), shows that the EU Regional Policy produced a positive impact on employment levels, without any displacement of economic activities away from nontreated regions and a concentration of the impact in key economic sectors.