Unemployment resistance across EU regions: the role of technological and human capital

Riccardo Cappelli (), Fabio Montobbio and Andrea Morrison

No 1831, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) from Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography

Abstract: We investigate the impact of the 2008 crisis to study the relationship between economic and technological resilience in 248 European Union regions. For economic resilience we measure the difference between the level of unemployment rate before crisis and the level of unemployment rate at its peak after the crisis - i.e., the unemployment resistance. Using European Patent Office patents, we look at all technological crises in each region since 1978 and build a variable of technological resilience measuring the historical ability of a region to maintain its level of knowledge creation in face of adverse shocks - i.e., the technological resistance. We find that technological resistance is a good predictor of economic resistance. In particular, our results show that (1) important interaction effects exist between technological resistance and human capital, (2) technological resistance and the level of human capital are less effective in protecting female and elder adult workers in an economic crisis and (3) important country level effects are present.

Keywords: Economic resilience; technological resilience; unemployment; recession; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J64 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07, Revised 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Unemployment resistance across EU regions: the role of technological and human capital (2021)
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