Anything New In Town? The Local Effects Of Urban Regeneration Policies In Italy

The paper estimates the local effects of urban regeneration policies by using evidence from interventions that took place in small and medium-sized cities in the Centre and North of Italy over the period 2008-12. By combining a difference-in-differences setup with an Oaxaca-Blinder estimator, we find little support for the idea that urban regeneration projects could stimulate local economic growth in the short to medium term. Only the largest scale interventions that focused on improving the public realm seem to have led to increase in house prices, but they have had no impact on other economic outcomes.