Interpersonal transfers: Do they impact the growth of poor and rich European regions?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how national interpersonaltransfer policies affect regions’ economic growth. Reviewing the economic literature,we found only incidental evidences and contradictory conclusions. Our objective isto provide some statistical evidence of the relation between interregional interpersonalredistribution towards poor European regions and their relative growth. Usingsome recent developments in the field of spatial data analysis, we found that interpersonaltransfers do not seem to affect negatively the economic growth of poor Europeanregions, while it is not possible to assert their impact on rich regions.

Keywords

• Income transfers
• regional growth
• spatial dependence.