Regional Resilience: Are recessionary shocks persistent or transitory?
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The response by regional and national economies to exogenous impulses has a well-established literature in both spatial econometrics and in mainstream econometrics and is of considerable importance given the post-2008 economic crisis, which is characterised by a period of severe global instability resulting from unprecedented economic shocks. Martin et al. (2016) note that in economic geography resilience describes regions’ reactions to, and recovery from, negative economic shocks, based on a concept which has been widely used in the engineering and ecological sciences and which has been increasingly adopted in economic geography. This PhD provides an empirical analysis of resilience at the national, regional, and individual level. Four empirical Chapters are presented which feature econometric analysis in the form of vector error correction (VEC) models, dynamic spatial panel models, and pooled crosssectional models. The national analysis focuses on European counties and the US and analyses the impact of shocks from within the EU and from the US on each country. The second empirical Chapter focuses on US metropolitan statistics areas and analyses the impact of industry structure on the resilience of US metropolitan areas. The third empirical Chapter focuses on the resilience of wages in the US to the global economic crisis. The final empirical Chapter analyses the impact of the crisis on individual’s employment outcomes in select European countries. The results of the analysis clearly indicate that industry structure plays an important role in explaining the resilience of nations, regional, and individuals (who reside within broader regions). The findings suggest that diversity of economic structure and structural change can result in more resilient regions. At the individual level there is significant evidence that education plays a critical role in explaining the resilience of individuals’ wages and employment outcomes.