Monday 24 August 2015

Regional resilience across Europe: on urbanisation and the initial impact of the Great Recession

an article by Steven Brakman and Harry Garretsen (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) and Charles van Marrewijk (Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University, China and Utrecht University School of Economics, the Netherlands) published in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society Volume 8 Number 2 (July 2015)

Abstract

Using a novel data set for 207 European regions from 22 different countries, we analyse the relevance of urbanisation for the short-term resilience to a major shock.

We take the Great Recession, the economic and financial crisis that started in 2008, as our shock and analyse how the European NUTS 2 regions differ in their short-run resilience in the aftermath to the crisis in terms of unemployment and real GDP per capita.

We find that the degree and nature of regional urbanisation is important for resilience. EU regions with a relatively large share of the population in commuting areas are relatively more resilient. In addition, regions with a large output share in medium-high tech industries were also less affected by the crisis.

JEL codes: R11, R12, R15


No comments: