Feasibility study for the overall impact evaluation of the European Social Fund

The European Social Fund (ESF) is one of the Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds) which aim to provide support and to create more and better jobs and a socially inclusive society. The aim of this report is to assess the feasibility of an evaluation of the causal effects of the ESF on key objectives (growth and productivity, employment, poverty and inequality, and human capital accumulation) in the EU regions that benefited of the financial assistance in the programming periods 1994-99, 2000-06 and 2007-13. The report tries to answer three main questions: first, what are the most suitable data on ESF spending to be used (treatment definition); second, which are the most appropriate counterfactual impact evaluation methods that can be applied given the way ESF is allocated and given the data availability (method choice); third, which are the most credible outcomes variable to focus on to estimate the impact of ESF (Outcome definition).