A simulation on the 2013 EU Regional Policy Outcome

The aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of EU regional policy with respect to economic convergence. In particular, I tried to “measure” the effect of EU regional policy on the per capita Gross Domestic Product by means of a simulation that starts from the GDP growth rate estimated by Eurostat concerning the 2006-2008 sample. The original point of my work consists in a way to consider separately GDP growth and Population growth. I acted as follows: first, I considered the estimated GDP growth rate in the sample 2006-2008 and I calculated the average rate; second, I calculated the average population growth rate in the sample 1998-2003 and, finally, I used the two rate to forecast the GDP per capita in the 2013. The idea behind this technical procedure is that change in demographic variable have a stronger inertia than change in the economic variable. It is important to underline that the purpose of this paper is not to make a good forecast of the 2013 situation concerning the GDP per capita, but representing an optimistic frame that does not consider many theoretical factors that should worsen the whole economic performance. Despite the simplicity of the method adopted this framework may be very powerful. In fact it is able to analyse not only a ceteris paribus scenario, but also the effect of Public Policy eventually even year by year without complex assumption on such a rule that governs the two rate here considered. In this work I propose an analysis that may be thought as divided into two main parts. The first one with the aim to provide a synthesis of the main results achieved in literature about the economic convergence. In a second part, I provide a forecast based on empirical evidence. At margin note that the empirical evidence here considered is consistent with some assertion provided by literature.