Job Market Paper
Working paper · 2025 · In revisione presso Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Economics and Statistics Discussion Paper No. 100/25, Università del Molise
In breve
Il paper stima l’effetto dei fondi di coesione europei sulla digitalizzazione dei comuni italiani, usando la qualità dei siti web municipali — misurata con tecniche di web scraping — come proxy della capacità di e-government, in un disegno Difference-in-Differences generalizzato. I fondi migliorano gli standard tecnologici di base (adozione di HTML5, struttura dei siti più semplice), con effetti più forti nei comuni piccoli, del Mezzogiorno e delle Aree Interne: la politica di coesione può quindi sostenere la convergenza digitale nei contesti strutturalmente svantaggiati. I progressi sull’interattività dei siti restano invece selettivi.
Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of European Cohesion Funds on the digitalization of local governments in Italy, using the quality of municipal websites as a proxy for e-government capacity. Using web scraping techniques and a generalized Difference-in-Differences approach, the study examines whether municipalities that received targeted EU funding for digital networks and services experienced improvements in website technological sophistication. The results show that cohesion funds have contributed to the adoption of modern web standards, particularly HTML5, and to the simplification of website structure, indicating progress in the core aspects of digital infrastructure. These effects are especially pronounced in smaller municipalities and those located in the South and Inner Areas, suggesting that the cohesion policy can support digital convergence in structurally disadvantaged contexts. However, the absence of systematic improvements in broader dimensions of web interactivity points to the selective nature of these advancements.