Making the EU cohesion policy work to support exports at time of Covid-19: Evidence on the Italian regions

This study investigates regional trade resilience and the role of the EU cohesion policy to support exports during the first wave of the Covid-19 crisis. We compare regional export resilience during the pandemic shock and the Great Recession in order to find possible similar patterns. We also use panel estimates obtained for the years of the Great Recession to construct regional trade adjustment scenarios at time of Covid-19. Our results suggest that the main adverse consequences of the first wave of the pandemic crisis on regional exports are localised in the regions that show high integration in international global value chains, and high exposure to tourism activities. We also find that the drop in regional exports observed during the first wave of the Covid-19 shock can be limited if more EU funds are timely transferred to beneficiaries. We develop different trade adjustment scenarios to account for heterogeneity among the Italian regions and specific characteristics of the Covid-19 crisis. The main policy implications of our study are finally discussed.