Why are some Spanish regions more resilient than others?

Abstract

Which of a region's characteristics most strongly influence its degree of resilience? This study constructs a composite resilience index for the Spanish regions and uses Multiple Factor Analysis to compare it with the Martin resilience index (Martin, 2012). The results of a Principal Components Analysis to measure the relative contributions of potential regional resilience drivers indicate that, during recovery periods, it is market-service focused regional economies that show stronger resilience, while, in crisis periods, it is regions with a more highly-educated workforce. KEYWORDSdata envelopment analysis, multiple factor analysis, principal components analysis, regional resilience, Spanish economy JEL CLASSIFICATION R11; R12; R58

Inequality and Employment Resilience: An Analysis of Spanish Municipalities during the Great Recession

“…Although not wholly new to economics, resilience has recently become a popular topic of investigation in the field (Ubago Martínez et al 2019; Escribá-Pérez, Murgui-García, and Ruiz-Tamarit 2017). Resilience entered economic discourse only after being first studied in contexts of engineering, ecology, and psychology 1 (Martin and Sunley 2015), resulting in its three leading interpretations: engineering resilience, which is the ability of a region to bounce back from a shock; ecological resilience, which considers a change in growth patterns of regions after a shock (Martin 2012); and adaptive resilience, which considers differential trajectories of economic activity after a shock (Martin and Sunley 2015).…”

“…One of the issues in measuring resilience is the lack of a standard set of quantitative indicators (Ubago Martínez et al 2019). The use of employment outcomes to measure resilience is common in the economics literature (e.g., Fingleton et al 2012; Martin 2012; Kitsos and Bishop 2018; Rahe et al 2019).…”

“…Others argue that output measures are better suited for measuring resilience due to their closer link to the determinants of resilience (Fratesi and Perucca 2018), while Lewin, Watson, and Brown (2018) use personal income data. Ubago Martínez et al (2019) find a middle ground by creating a composite resilience index using employment and output data. 2…”

“…On one hand, our paper connects to studies on resilience. The literature on resilience has drastically grown since the Great Recession (Ubago Martínez et al 2019) and has made efforts to clarify the concept of resilience (e.g., Martin and Sunley 2015); constructed ways to measure resilience, mainly through output and employment data (e.g., Ringwood, Watson, and Lewin 2019); and gauged the determinants of resilience (e.g., Di Caro and Fratesi 2018). On the other hand, our paper connects to the literature on the causes and consequences of income inequality.…”

Does innovation matter for regional labour resilience? The case of EU regions

“…In addition, relevant studies have shown that labour conditions (Ríos, 2017) and human capital endowment (Lo Cascio, Mazzola, & Epifanio, 2018) represent an important determinant of different regional impact of the last great economic crisis (Ubago, García-Lautre, Iraizoz, & Pascual, 2019) and with profound, specific and complex reflection on key socio-economic regional phenomena.…”