欧洲央行-私人投资、研发和欧洲结构与投资基金：挤入还是挤出？（英）

Working Paper Series Private investment, R&D and European Structural and Investment Funds: crowding-in or crowding-out? Roberto A. De Santis, Francesca Vinci Disclaimer: This paper should not be reported as representing the views of the European Central Bank (ECB). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the ECB. No 3098 AbstractWe employ a novel regional dataset on European private investment and businessR&D spanning the years 2000 to 2021, along with comprehensive historical data onEuropean Union Structural and Investment (ESI) funds, to estimate whether ESIfunds have crowding-in or crowding-out effects on private investment and businessR&D. Our analysis, leveraging regional variation and a fiscal instrument immune toregion-specific shocks, reveals a significant crowding-in effect, with 1 euro in ESI fundsincreasing private investment by 1.1 euros and business R&D by 0.1 euros after twoyears. The effect is stronger in developed regions for private investment and in lessdeveloped regions for R&D. Additionally, crowding-in effects are stronger in regionswhere corporate private debt is relatively higher. Among the different ESI funds,the Cohesion Fund (CF) shows the largest estimated impact, while the EuropeanRegional Development Fund (ERDF) yields somewhat smaller but statistically morerobust results.Keywords: EU, Structural and Investment Funds, Private Investment, R&D, fiscal instruments.JEL Codes: E22, H54, O38, O52, R11, R58ECB Working Paper Series No 30981Non-technical summaryEurope faces substantial investment needs, and a strong complementarity between the pub-lic and private sectors could be crucial in effectively addressing these challenges. The debateover whether public expenditures crowd out or crowd in private investment shifts towards un-derstanding how public investments influence private investments.Crowding-out can occur if the supply of input (e.g.scientists) is inelastic; in this case,an increase in public investment comes at the expense of declines in private investment (e.g.,as fewer scientists would be available for private projects). Moreover, it occurs when publicinterventions substitute private capital, reducing incentives to invest for firms. Similarly, thereare several reasons for crowding-in to prevail, stemming from complementarities across publicand private capital. First, in the presence of large fixed costs, public investment in technology,innovation and infrastructure may make marginal projects feasible. The typical examples arethe construction of a road with public resources and the subsequent private initiative that suchprojects would enable. Second, there could be “spillover effects”, where new technologies finddifferent applications in the private sector. Third, credit constraints on the private sector maylimit the financing of projects without government support.Recent studies have shown that certain public investments, such as defence-related R&D,can indeed crowd