Resources, experience and other factors behind municipalities’ European Structural Funds. Absorption capacity of Tuscan local governments

Journal title RIV Rassegna Italiana di Valutazione
Author/s Silvia Duranti, Patrizia Lattarulo, Letizia Ravagli
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2016/66
Language Italian Pages 19 P. 139-157 File size 554 KB
DOI 10.3280/RIV2016-066009
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The aim of the paper is to explain what are the determinants of Tuscan municipalities’ absorption capacity of European Structural Funds. For this purpose we use a hurdle model which consists of two parts. Firstly, a binary logistic model is used to estimate the probability that a municipality gets at least one project financed with EU structural funds. Secondly, a regression with negative binomial distribution is estimated only for municipalities with at least one project financed, in order to identify the determinants of the number of projects. The results show that the probability of access to at least one European project is mainly influenced by three factors: the demographic size of the municipality, the experience in previous programming cycles and by the geographic area. When it comes to the determinants of the number of projects financed (for those municipalities which got at least one project financed), other factors play an important role. One of these is the adequacy of civil servants both in terms of size and quality, the latter measured by the incidence of graduated civil servants in the municipality. Also economic and financial factors impact on the number of projects financed at the municipality level: the amount of revenues has a positive effect while the presence of deficit and Internal Stability Pact constraints seem to have a negative impact. Even political stability finally appears to have a positive role in the municipality absorption capacity of Structural Funds.

Keywords: Structural Funds; Municipalities; Absorption Capacity.

  1. Anci Toscana (2010). La Toscana e l’Europa: un’indagine tra le amministrazioni comunali. Ai comuni toscani serve l’europrogettazione.
  2. Arellano M., Bond S. (1991). Some tests of specification for panel data: Monte Carlo evi-dence and an application to employment equations. The Review of Economic Studies, 58: 277-297. DOI: 10.2307/2297968
  3. De Leeuw J., Meijer E. (2008). Handbook of Multilevel Analysis. Springer, New York.
  4. De Rooij R. (2002). The Impact of the European Union on Local Government in the Nether-lands. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(6): 1.000-1.019. DOI: 10.1080/13501760210139713
  5. Horvat A. (2004). Absorption Problems in the EU Structural Funds. Some Aspects Regard-ing Administrative Absorption Capacity in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. National Agency for Regional Development of Slovenia.
  6. Kerli L. (2013). Unpacking Administrative Capacity for the Management of EU Structural Funds in Small and Large Municipalities: The Estonian Case. Halduskultuur-Administrative Culture. 14(1): 98-124.
  7. Mullahy J. (1986). Specification and testing of some modified count data models. Journal of Econometrics. 33:341–65.
  8. StataCorp (2013). Stata: Release 13. Statistical Software College Station, TX: StataCorp LP.
  9. Šumpíková M., Jan P., Stanislav K. (2004). EU Funds: Absorption Capacity and Effectiveness of Their Use, with Focus on Regional Level in the Czech Republic. Conference Proceedings of the 12th NISPAcee Conference Central and Eastern European Countries Inside and Outside the European Union: Avoiding a New Divide, Vilnius, Lituania. 13-15 Maggio.
  10. Tatar M. (2010). Estonian Local Government Absorption Capacity of European Union Structural Funds. Halduskultuur – Administrative Culture, 11(2): 202-236.
  11. Veiga L. (2012). Determinants of the assignment of EU funds to Portuguese municipalities. Public Choice, 153: 215-233.
  12. Zerbinati S., Vangelis S. (2005). Entrepreneurship in the Public Sector: A Framework of Analysis in European Local Governments. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 17: 43-64. DOI: 10.1080/0898562042000310723

Silvia Duranti, Patrizia Lattarulo, Letizia Ravagli, Risorse, esperienza e caratteristiche dell’amministrazione dietro i fondi comunitari dei comuni. La capacità di assorbimento delle amministrazioni nel caso toscano in "RIV Rassegna Italiana di Valutazione" 66/2016, pp 139-157, DOI: 10.3280/RIV2016-066009