This paper investigates the effects of EU regional support on firms' productivity, the number of employees and other firm performance indicators. For this purpose, a rich firmlevel dataset for Latvia, a country where investment activities are affected by the availability of EU funding, is used. The paper finds that participation in activities cofunded by the ERDF raises firms' input and output soon after they embark on them, while the effect on labour productivity and TFP appears only with a time lag of three years. However, this positive productivity premium is not homogenous across firms and is more likely to materialise in the case of initially less productive and medium-sized/large firms. Furthermore, statistical significance of positive productivity gains is not particularly robust across different estimation procedures. The study also shows that after controlling for investment expenditures, EU sponsored projects are as efficient as the privately financed ones, irrespective of where private financing comes from.

中文翻译：

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欧盟区域支持计划对企业绩效的重要性*

本文研究了欧盟区域支持对企业生产率，员工人数和其他企业绩效指标的影响。为此，使用了拉脱维亚的丰富公司级数据集，拉脱维亚是一个受欧盟资金支持影响投资活动的国家。该论文发现，参与由ERDF共同资助的活动可以提高公司投入后的投入和产出，而对劳动生产率和TFP的影响仅出现三年的时间。但是，这种积极的生产率溢价在各个公司之间并不是同质的，并且在最初生产效率较低的中型/大型公司的情况下更可能实现。此外，在不同的估算程序中，生产率正增长的统计意义不是特别稳健。