Our economists collaborate with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Seville, using a macroeconomic model called RHOMOLO to assess the impact of operations supported by the EIB Group and EFSI on jobs and growth in Europe.
The RHOMOLO model is a well-established model that was originally developed by the European Commission to assess the macroeconomic impact of EU policies, such as EU cohesion policy, to determine whether scarce public financing is being used effectively. The EIB’s collaboration with the Joint Research Centre is focused on adapting the model to make it fully applicable to the EIB, and using it to assess the macroeconomic impact of investments supported by the EIB Group, including under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). You can find more information about RHOMOLO model in the methodological report.
This work complements the Bank’s other impact assessment activities. While investment outputs and outcomes are assessed at a project level (for example through the Additionality and Impact Measurement framework), the wider economic impact of such activities in terms of indirect and induced effects typically cannot be measured at a project level, as they reflect complex economic interconnections.
For example, when an internet cable is laid, it is possible to directly measure project outputs and outcomes such as project employment, kilometres of cable laid, households connected and the increase in data transmission speed. However, the wider economic impact of things such as the production of the cable, increased spending by project workers, and the effects of faster internet on the market access and competitiveness of regional businesses, is much harder to capture at the project level. Special efforts can be made to explore these impacts for individual projects (see also the EIB collaboration with the Global Development Network), but on a broader scale, macroeconomic models are used to estimate overall impact in terms of GDP and jobs.