The impact of territorial capital on Cohesion Policy in rural Polish areas

ABSTRACT

This study evaluates the outcomes of the European Union’s Cohesion Policy on rural areas in Poland between 2007 and 2018. Stratified propensity score matching was used to examine whether policy impact depends on the type of local territorial capital involved. Inputs and outcomes between individual municipalities with similar territorial capital characteristics and conditions of socio-economic development were modelled and compared. The results show that more advanced development of non-agricultural functions and also a reduced agricultural function led to greater Cohesion Policy effectiveness. Thus, convergence, or the evening out of differences in socio-economic development, does not take place at the local (intraregional) level.

KEYWORDS:

• Cohesion Policy
• effectiveness
• rural areas
• territorial capital
• stratified propensity score matching

JEL:

• C54
• O18
• O21
• R12
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The study used data from the Rural Development Monitoring (MROW) project carried out jointly by the European Fund for the Development of Polish Villages and the Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Sciences, for which the authors are grateful.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The municipality (gmina) is a local administrative unit (former NUTS-5). Poland has three types of administrative municipality: urban, urban–rural and rural. On average, a rural or urban–rural municipality has a population of about 9000 inhabitants, and an area of 140 km².

2. The research methodology takes into account the key economic and non-economic determinants of rural development which are essential to address the features of rural areas in Poland. These factors include the de-agrarianization of the local economy, the characteristics of agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, the spatial accessibility of municipalities, local public finances, the labour market, demographic issues, education, social activities, wealth, and the living conditions of the local community.

3. Due to some projects still being implemented as part of the 2014–20 framework and the time needed for intervention effects to be observable, the analysis only covers completed projects.

4. PLN 1 = €0.23 (2018 average).

5. The Państwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne (PGR), or state agricultural farm, was a form of collective farming in the People’s Republic of Poland, similar to the Soviet sovkhoz and East German Volkseigenes Gut.

6. However, the scale of these differences is something of a surprise, as the effects of intervention are barely noticeable in the most backward areas. It needs emphasizing that other studies using the SPSM method (Wojtowicz & Widła-Domaradzki, 2017; Wolański et al., 2018) made it possible to identify a much wider effect of EU intervention in Poland, so it would be wrong to equate the lack of effects with the ineffectiveness of the method.

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy [contract number BDG-V.2611.89.2018.KR].