The resilience of regional labour markets to economic shocks: Exploring the role of interactions among firms and workers

Abstract

To date, theoretical and empirical insights in the determinants of regional resilience are still limited. Using a model, we explore how three regional factors jointly contribute to the resilience of regional labour markets to economic shocks. The localization of the supply network (1) is used to model the propagation of the shock, while possibilities for intersectoral (2) and interregional labour mobility (3) to analyse the recovery. An application of the model to Dutch data suggests that labour markets in centrally located and service-oriented regions have, on average, a higher recovery speed, irrespective of the type of shock hitting the economy.