Adjustment mechanisms of Greek regions in export activity during the economic crisis of 2008–2012

Abstract

Under the deep and protracted recession that plagues the Greek regions, exports have shown some positive signs of resilience. This paper explores through a spatial econometric analysis of SUR models, first, the changes that occurred in exports by the (NUTS 3 level) regions for the period 2008–2012 to offer resistance against the crisis and to stimulate growth, which entail expansion of export demand, improvement in the quality of agricultural products, deeper specialization in broad low‐technology sectors and simultaneous increases in the variety inside these sectors and second, the ability of exports to transfer their growth gains to the broader economy.

Trading with richer and poorer countries: trade integration and regional inequality in Greece

“…Industry in these regions is more competitive in non-EU markets, as it is less exposed to substitution effects from trade with lower-income countries. Hence, the rise in trade with Balkan countries, which intensified in the period 2008–2012, when the Balkans became the most important destination for Greek exports, was beneficial for the main Greek industrial hubs (Tsiapa 2019 ). As indicated by Tsiapa ( 2019 : 629), “the economic crisis partially suspended the trade co-operation networks between Greece and the EU due to emerging restrictions on financing and credibility, and gave emphasis to more flexible co-operation schemes with the Balkans based on the advantages of geographical proximity and historical ties—while the export share in markets such as Asia and Africa recorded also a notable rise”.…”

Regional economic resilience: A scoping review

“…Technology coherence improves economies' adaptive capacity via knowledge spillovers, enabling them to generate new growth paths, improving their overall resilience to shocks (Boschma, 2015;Cappelli et al, 2021;Evenhuis, 2017;Rizzi et al, 2018;Rocchetta and Mina, 2019) Innovative capacity Regions with a greater innovative capacity are more adaptive and hence, resilient to shocks because they have a greater propensity to create new products and improve production processes, resulting in new growth paths and more competitive regions (Bristow and Healy, 2018b;Clark et al, 2010;Crescenzi et al, 2016;Di Caro and Fratesi, 2018;Huang, 2021;Pizzuto, 2020;Rizzi et al, 2018;Rocchetta and Mina, 2019;Toth, 2015) Export-oriented economies More export-oriented regions are able to generate revenue from other localities to sustain their growth and enhance their recovery, and enable regions to adjust better to shocks (Chapple and Lester, 2010;Masik and Rzyski, 2014;Petrakos and Psycharis, 2016;Tsiapa, 2019) Competitiveness More competitive regions are more resilient because they can better resist and react to shocks due to their dynamic nature (Di Caro and Fratesi, 2018;Fratesi and Rodríguez-Pose, 2016;Palekiene et al, 2015;Pizzuto, 2020)…”

A holistic approach of the labour productivity slowdown in the regions of the European Union

“…The gravity index proxies the geo‐economic position of a region, estimated using the equation , where i denotes the studied region, j is the rest of the regions, J is all the latter regions, GDP is the gross domestic product of the region in question and d is the distance between regions i and j . This variable is an index of centrality and accessibility in the space (Tsiapa, 2019), defining the position of each region according to geographical and economic dynamics. Its contribution will define whether regions with improvements in geo‐economic position relate to mitigating the productivity slowdown.…”

“…There are three categories of weight matrices, the pure contiguity matrices which consider island areas as non-neighbouring (nonconnected) regions (LeGallo & Dall'erba, 2006) and therefore are not proper for countries like Greece, the matrices of distance which consider the travel time as homogenous, a fact that is unrealistic for islands, and the matrices of nearest neighbours that consider regions of equal size and constitute the most convenient choice(Tsiapa, 2019).…”