EU regional inequalities at a critical juncture: 'place-based' development strategies, investment promotion and the role of domestic development polic

The past decade has seen a significant shift in how EU institutions tackle regional inequalities. Firstly, the EU's flagship Cohesion policy (and associated funds), arguably the most comprehensive policy aimed at mitigating regional inequalities, has recently pioneered a markedly more 'place-based' approach, whereby regions play the lead role in defining their own opportunities and strategies for growth. Secondly, in response to the economic impacts of COVID-19 on EU economies and the disparities between them, the EU has agreed a historic 750 bn fund to help regional economies recover in a way that renders them more dynamic, resilient and sustainable. My PhD seeks to join up these two pivotal developments: to look critically at the EU experience with place-based development strategies in order to determine what good regional economic policies look like for the post-COVID era. Specifically, I plan to focus on the role of regional and national investment promotion within EU-funded place-based development strategies, plus how these might interact with ongoing, domestically-funded ones. My proposed methodology is fundamentally quantitative: I aim to apply econometric techniques on purpose-built datasets, and tease out the causal effect that different types of policies have on the economic outcomes of regions. At a time when political tensions in the UK, USA and many EU nations are focusing attention on the extent and effect of within-country regional inequality, my ambition is for my PhD research to contribute robust, tangible insights into how policy-makers in a variety of contexts can effectively act to close this gap.
The persistence of economic disparities between regions is a topic that has in recent years garnered particular attention. In fact, as the initial shock of COVID-19 lockdowns begins to subside, it is becoming evident that the pandemic has had very unequal impacts from one region to another, many of which threaten to reinforce longer-term regional disparities and aggravate already-simmering political tensions. Against this backdrop, my PhD seeks to better understand how regional inequalities may be best tackled by policy-makers, and what factors condition success. By focusing on the case of the EU, which has in recent years pioneered a novel 'place-based' strategy that gives a markedly bigger role to individual regions in defining their development priorities, I intend to tackle three specific questions: firstly, whether such 'place-based' approaches work better at reducing spatial economic disparities - and if so, why; secondly, how a critical element of regional development - Foreign Direct Investment - fits within these new place-based approaches, and what this suggests about regions' abilities to leverage the potential benefits of globalisation; thirdly, I will seek to understand the coherence between the newer, EU-funded place-based strategies and those that are managed and funded domestically by member states. My proposed methodology is fundamentally quantitative: I aim to apply econometric techniques on purpose-built datasets, and tease out the causal effect that different types of policies have on the economic outcomes of regions. While my proposal is to focus on the EU experience, I will aspire to draw conclusions of relevance beyond the EU's borders.