How Regions React to Recessions: Resilience and the Role of Economic Structure

TLDR

Regional resilience to economic downturns is a critical topic, with prior work examining how economic structure influences recovery. The study analyzes UK regional employment responses across four major recessions from 1974 to 2010. It employs the concepts of resistance and recoverability to assess regional employment dynamics. The results show both continuity and change in regional recession impacts across cycles, and while economic structure influences resistance and recoverability in some regions, region‑specific competitiveness factors often play an equally or more significant role.

Abstract

Martin R., Sunley P., Gardiner B. and Tyler P. How regions react to recessions: resilience and the role of economic structure, Regional Studies. This paper examines how employment in the major UK regions has reacted to the four major recessions of the last 40 years, namely 1974–76, 1979–83, 1990–93 and 2008–10. The notions of resistance and recoverability are used to examine these reactions. The analysis reveals both continuities and significant changes in the regional impact of recession from one economic cycle to the next. Further, while economic structure is found to have exerted some influence on the resistance and recoverability of certain regions, in general 'region-specific' or 'competitiveness' effects appear to have played an equally, if not more, significant role.