Regional Growth Paths and Resilience: A European Analysis

Don Webber, Adrian Healy and Gillian Bristow

Economic Geography, 2018, vol. 94, issue 4, 355-375

Abstract: Research highlighting the differential resilience of economies to shocks opens up the possibility that long-run growth paths are associated with how regions cope with and recover from such shocks. To date, however, there has been limited exploration into whether long-run evolutionary growth paths or trajectories influence regional economic resilience and what types of trajectories might be more associated with resilience. This article explores the connections between regional economic resilience and regional and national growth trajectories by utilizing a novel set of methods to group regions according to the similarity of their growth paths, identifying the relative importance of national growth for regional growth, and categorizing regions according to their resilience to the 2007–2008 economic crisis. The results suggest that regions have empirically identifiable long-run and path-dependent development trajectories that are significantly associated with industrial employment shares and observed resilience outcomes. Critically, however, these regional growth paths are significantly shaped by national trajectories. Furthermore, regions with greater employment shares in sectors that are less susceptible to demand fluctuations are likely to experience more stable growth rates and be more resilient to economic downturns. This has implications for understanding the importance of evolutionary trends and specifically the role of national contexts and industrial legacies in shaping regional resilience.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00130095.2017.1419057 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:94:y:2018:i:4:p:355-375

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recg20

DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2017.1419057

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Geography is currently edited by James Murphy

More articles in Economic Geography from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().