Mapping Research on European Structural and Investment Funds, Innovation and Economic Growth: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) are the primary financial instrument of EU cohesion policy. Despite their central role in supporting innovation activity and economic growth, the literature remains fragmented across four distinct research traditions, namely evaluative-econometric, macroeconomic, regional-innovation and institutional-political. This paper employs bibliometric analysis to examine the intellectual foundations, thematic structure and developmental dynamics of the ESIF, innovation and economic growth research field.  Bibliometric analysis of 305 documents (Web of Science, 1991 to 2026) was conducted using Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny, integrating performance analysis with science mapping. We identify four intellectual traditions that, despite sharing a common object of inquiry, operate in largely separate citation networks. This intellectual fragmentation may contribute to the persistence of heterogeneous and hard to compare findings regarding ESIF effectiveness. The absence of a dominant motor theme suggests that the field is methodologically mature yet thematically unconsolidated, underscoring the urgent need for deeper synthesis of accumulated knowledge. We further find a geographical asymmetry in the analysed dataset, with research on ESIF concentrated on countries where the funds carry comparatively limited direct economic consequences, while Central and Eastern European countries, where ESIF have the most immediate impact, have a relatively limited presence. The analysis further identifies a phased developmental trajectory that coincides with EU cohesion policy programming cycles (annual growth rate of 4.04%), suggesting that research production may be partly responsive to EU cohesion-policy programming cycles rather than driven solely by endogenous scientific inquiry. Copyright© 2026 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Article's History: Received 29th of May, 2026; Revised 9th of July, 2026; Accepted 30th of July, 2026; Available online: 30th of September, 2026. Published as research article in the Volume XXI, Fall, Issue 4(94), 2026.