Skill-relatedness und Resilienz: Fallbeispiel Saarland

Abstract

The resilience of a region depends crucially on the extent to which industry-specific human capital can be redeployed across regional economy’s industries. To this end, we present a toolbox to analyze a region’s industrial structure, development prospects and economic resilience that highlights the human capital similarities, or skill-relatedness, among industries. The core of these analyses is the so-called industry space, a network that connects industries with similar human capital requirements. In a case study, we use this toolbox to identify the risks and opportunities for the economic perspectives and resilience of Germany’s state Saarland based on the time period 2008 to 2012. This analysis shows that one important concern for this former old-industrial region is that its traditional manufacturing base is almost unconnected in terms of skill-relatedness to the emerging high-technology activities that are central in the region’s innovation agenda.