评估欧盟复苏和韧性基金对机构质量的影响：贝叶斯综合控制方法

Assessing the impact of the EU’sRecovery and Resilience Facility oninstitutional quality: a Bayesiansynthetic control approach Nico Zorell, Christoph Zwick Abstract The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), launched in 2021, aims to promote long-termeconomic growth in EU Member States by incentivising structural reforms and invest-ments. This paper explores a related supply-side transmission mechanism: improvementsin institutional quality, as measured by the Worldwide Governance Indicators.Using aBayesian synthetic control model and data up to 2024, we find robust and economicallymeaningful RRF-induced improvements in institutional quality in Italy.For other mainRRF beneficiary countries, the evidence of such an effect ranges from suggestive to limited.We show that this cross-country variation is broadly consistent with the implementation ofthe national Recovery and Resilience Plans in terms of implementation speed and reformmix. While it is too early to draw firm policy conclusions, the findings lend support to theview that conditional, reform-linked financing instruments of the RRF type can improveinstitutional quality and, thereby, long-term growth prospects – provided that the reformsare well designed and effectively implemented. Keywords:institutions, reforms, Recovery and Resilience Facility, NextGenerationEUJEL Classification:C11, E02, E65, O43 Non-technical summary The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), launched in 2021, aims to promote long-termeconomic growth in EU Member States by incentivising structural reforms and investments.To this end, the temporary policy instrument offers arounde600 billion of debt-financed EUfunds to Member States in the form of loans and non-repayable grants. Payments are condi-tional on achieving pre-defined milestones and targets. This paper studies a key supply-sidetransmission mechanism of the RRF: improvements in institutional quality, i.e. improvementsin the effectiveness of the formal and informal "rules of the game" for economic activities. Our empirical analysis uses World Bank data available up to end-2024 and a Bayesiansynthetic control model to assess the causal impact of the RRF on institutional quality.Weconstruct a no-RRF counterfactual separately for each main RRF beneficiary country, describ-ing how institutional quality would likely have evolved in the absence of the programme. Thecounterfactual is derived from developments in control countries, i.e. peer countries with littleor no exposure to the RRF. By comparing actual developments in institutional quality to thecounterfactual, this approach yields both a point estimate of the programme’s impact and ameasure of the uncertainty surrounding it. The results show clear cross-country differences. For Italy, we find robust and economi-cally meaningful improvements in institutional quality resulting from the RRF. For Bulgaria,Croatia and Greece, the evidence for such an effect points in a positive direction but is sur-rounded by significantly higher uncertainty. For Poland, Portugal and Spain, we find little in-dication that the programme has improved institutional quality. These differences are broadlyconsistent with plan implementation patterns which reinforces confidence in our findings.Countries that implemented their reform and investment commitments more quickly andfocused on governance-related reform measures tend to show stronger effects. The findings should be interpreted with caution. The programme is ongoing, institutionalindicators may adjust only gradually and the estimates for some countries may be confoundedby the euro adoption and Schengen entry process. Nevertheless, the early evidence suggeststhat conditional, reform-linked EU funding instruments can improve structural economic con-ditions and thus long-term growth prospects, as most clearly illustrated by our findings forItaly.At the same time, the cross-country variation in our estimates indicates that reformdesign and plan implementation matter. 1Introduction In February 2021, the EU established the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to addressthe economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. A key objective of the RRF, beyond short-term demand stabilisation, is to boost the EU’s potential output in the longer term. To thisend, the temporary policy instrument offers arounde600 billion of debt-financed EU funds toMember States in the form of loans and non-repayable grants. To obtain these funds, MemberStates need to implement pre-agreed structural reforms and investments summarised in theso-called Recovery and Resilience Plans. This paper aims to provide initial insights into the RRF’s effectiveness in achieving itsobjective of boosting long-run economic growth. A major challenge in this assessment is dataavailability. Beyond the fact that the implementation of RRF-linked investments and reformsis still ongoing, it also takes time for these policy measures to fully unfold their economicimpact – particularly for str