How resilient are the European regions? Evidence from the societal response to the 2008 financial crisis

Peter Benczur, Elisabeth Joossens (), Anna Rita Manca (), Balint Menyhert and Slavica Zec ()
Additional contact information
Elisabeth Joossens: European Commission - JRC, https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/index_en
Slavica Zec: European Commission - JRC, https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/index_en

No JRC121554, JRC Research Reports from Joint Research Centre

Abstract: This report proposes a new approach for measuring regional resilience that goes beyond the assessment of traditional economic dimensions. It defines resilience as the societal ability to preserve and generate well-being in the presence of shocks and persistent structural changes in a sustainable manner, without hindering the wellbeing of future generations. The empirical exercise concentrates on the 2008 financial and economic crisis and the subsequent overall response of EU regions to the economic shock. We implement a three-step methodology:(i) select an extensive list of economic and non-economic variables that span the entire production process of societal wellbeing; (ii) compute regional resilience indicators based on the joint dynamic response of these variables to the crisis; (iii) identify those pre-crisis characteristics that differentiate resilient regions from the non-resilient ones. Our analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity in resilience across the European regions. It confirms the importance of expanding the measurement strategy to a broader list of subjective and objective well-being measures (like social inclusion, social capital, and quality of life). We show that observed resilience performance is highly dependent on the time horizon: resilience rankings of European regions are markedly different in the short and long run. The analysis of the recovery time provides additional information on the strength and weaknesses of regions, and it is largely dependent on the specific dimensions (variables) considered. Finally, our results highlight that certain country-level and regional characteristics, such as private sector credit flows and the gender employment gap, are strong predictors of resilient regional behaviour after the crisis.

Keywords: regional resilience; societal well-being; impact; recovery; medium run; bounce forward; financial and economic crisis; absorption; adaptation; transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C50 I31 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-geo and nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc121554

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