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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2020) | Viewed by 50016

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Raul Ramos

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Guest Editor

AQR-IREA, University of Barcelona, Facultat d’Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 690, Barcelona, Spain
Interests: regional and urban economics; labor markets; human capital; migration; inequality; spatial econometrics

Dr. Matías Mayor

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Guest Editor

Department of Applied Economics, University of Oviedo, Av. del Cristo s/n, Oviedo, SpainGEN—Governance and Economics research Network, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain
Interests: regional economics; labor markets; spatial econometrics; tax competition

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The term “resilience” originated in environmental studies and describes the biological capacity to adapt and thrive under adverse environmental conditions. Regional economic resilience is defined as the capacity of a territory’s economy to resist and/or recover quickly from external shocks, even improving its situation from the pre-shock status. The objective of this Special Issue is to provide new evidence on different aspects of territorial resilience with a special focus on different channels related to regional labour markets. In particular, its aim is to bring together cutting-edge research papers around two complementary and interrelated axes:

- Processes of mitigation (resistance–recovery), including topics such as migration analysis, inequality, social cohesion and other labour market issues.

- Adaptive resilience (re-orientation–renewal), considering ways to improve regional conditions, such as human capital, education, entrepreneurship and innovation, among others.

Theoretical and empirical papers in all these areas are welcome, as long as they include a spatial perspective and deal with the issue of regional development and resilience.

Dr. Raul Ramos
Dr. Matías Mayor
Guest Editors

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Keywords

resilience
regional economic growth
migration
inequality
human capital
education
entrepreneurship
innovation

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Published Papers (11 papers)

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Editorial

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4 pages, 194 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Regions and Economic Resilience: New Perspectives

by Matías Mayor and Raul Ramos

Sustainability 2020, 12(11), 4693; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114693 - 9 Jun 2020

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3525

Abstract

The term “resilience” originated in environmental studies and describes the biological capacity to adapt and thrive under adverse environmental conditions. Regional economic resilience is defined as the capacity of a territory’s economy to resist and/or recover quickly from external shocks, even improving its situation from the pre-shock status. This editorial introduction provides a summary of the eleven contributions included in the special issue on regions and economic resilience. These eleven articles focus on different channels related to processes of mitigation (resistance-recovery) and adaptive resilience (reorientation-renewal) in a wide variety of geographical settings and scales. They include methodological advances and also relevant results from a policy perspective. The editorial concludes by providing some directions for future research. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

Research

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11 pages, 231 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Determinants of Economic Resilience. The Case of Eastern European Regions

by Florin Oprea, Mihaela Onofrei, Dan Lupu, Georgeta Vintila and Gigel Paraschiv

Sustainability 2020, 12(10), 4228; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12104228 - 21 May 2020

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 4890

Abstract

The economic crisis of 2008 strongly affected European countries, many of them slipping into a recession whose depth and manifestation differed substantially from country to country and from region to region. In this context, economists revived the concept of economic resilience of states and regions and focused on identifying and explaining its determinants. The literature investigates ways to enhance economic resilience through appropriate public policies, but the studies conducted so far have several limitations. In order to contribute to this goal, this article analyzes the economic resilience of the regions of seven Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and its main determinant factors. The results show that, in terms of resistance, Bulgaria, Slovenia and their regions behaved best, while Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia (including regions) had a negative evolution. In terms of recovery Bulgaria (and 4 regions out of 6), Romania (5 out of 8 regions) and Slovakia (4 of 4 regions) performed better than the other Eastern countries. The determining factors of resilience for the studied regions concern the size of the manufacturing sector, the services and public administration, entrepreneurship and the human capital represented by tertiary education; agriculture and urban population have no significant influence on regional resilience. We adopt an econometric approach in this study, using the quantile regression for the analysis. Based on these empirical evidences, appropriate proposals have been formulated, useful to both field theorists and practitioners in public policy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

10 pages, 521 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analyzing Determining Factors of Young Graduates’ Decision to Stay in Lagged Regions

by Youngjin Woo and Euijune Kim

Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3094; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083094 - 12 Apr 2020

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2420

Abstract

This study identifies what factors have effects on college graduates’ decisions to stay for jobs in lagged regions using a bivariate probit model with sample selection. The results show that strong preferences for a home village and a university region contribute to the decision about job location concerning the regions. In addition, low living costs have much significant impact on spatial choice compared with economic factors, such as the levels of wage and job security. The long-term economic growth of lagged regions could be affected by a preference of high-school graduates to attend local universities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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15 pages, 538 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Measuring Energy Performance for Regional Sustainable Development in China: A New Framework based on a Dynamic Two-Stage SBM Approach

by Sheng-Hsiung Chiu, Tzu-Yu Lin and Hai-Lan Yang

Sustainability 2020, 12(7), 2851; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072851 - 3 Apr 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2185

Abstract

Sustainable development has always been an important issue for all policy makers, even more so now, as global warming has seriously threatened the whole world. To understand the efficacy of regional sustainable policies, we proposed a dynamic, two-stage, slacks-based measure (SBM) model with carry-over and intermediate variables, highlighting the importance of an electricity portfolio, to measure overall energy performance for the purpose of regional sustainable development. In this unified linear programming framework with intertemporal evaluation, we estimated the effects of a clean electricity supply by the abatement of CO₂ emissions and the gain of economic growth. The results can be used as a reference for decision makers to shape regional sustainable development policies. Using data of 30 provincial administration regions in China for the period of 2012–2017, we postulate that the lower energy performance of the Chinese regional economic system for sustainable development may be attributed to a lower electricity portfolio performance. We then postulate that investment in low-carbon energy infrastructure can combat CO₂ emissions, and is also a major driving force in the regional economic growth. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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14 pages, 601 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Capital Structure across Italian Regions: The Role of Financial and Economic Differences

by Filippo di Pietro, Maria Elena Bontempi, María-José Palacín-Sánchez and Reyes Samaniego-Medina

Sustainability 2019, 11(16), 4474; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11164474 - 18 Aug 2019

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3223

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyse how regional financial and economic differences influence the capital structure decisions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, this paper considers the regional financial and economic differences in four ways: the development of the financial sector in the region, bank market concentration, the financial cost of obtaining funds, and regional economic development. For this purpose, we used unbalanced panel data from 26,504 SMEs across the 20 Italian regions and over the period from 2004 to 2010. This work is completed with an analysis of a no-crisis (2004–2007) and a crisis period (2008–2010). The results show that the regional differences in the degree of financial sector development, banking concentration, and local economic situations have a significant impact on the leverage level of SMEs, while the cost of obtaining funds is only relevant during a period of economic stability. These results suggest that insights can be derived from data disaggregation at the regional level inside the same country. These regional divergences in the capital structure of SMEs could influence regional economic resilience. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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19 pages, 636 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Role of Embeddedness on Regional Economic Resilience: Evidence from the UK

by Anastasios Kitsos, André Carrascal-Incera and Raquel Ortega-Argilés

Sustainability 2019, 11(14), 3800; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11143800 - 11 Jul 2019

Cited by 43 | Viewed by 6918

Abstract

This paper examines the role of local industrial embeddedness on economic resilience in UK Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS2) regions. The 2008 financial crisis had a profound effect on the socioeconomic conditions of different places. UK regions had significantly divergent experiences based on their capacity to avoid or overcome the shock. Research has shed light on some potential drivers behind this differential resilience performance such as skills, but others, such as the degree of a production system’s local embeddedness, are largely underexplored. This paper aims at filling this gap. We hypothesise that the combination of positive external economies of complexity and negative lock-in effects lead to an inverted U-shaped relationship between embeddedness and resilience. We use a novel dataset and method for approximating embeddedness and fixed-effects panel regressions for the period 2000–2010 to control for regional heterogeneity. The results support our hypothesis and suggest that embeddedness has a positive effect on resilience up to a point, after which more embeddedness leads to negative resilience effects. The results call for greater attention on the relationships among local industries, particularly with regards to the recent development of local industrial strategies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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17 pages, 601 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Agglomeration Economies in Small Cities and Business: The Impact of the Great Recession in Aragón (Spain)

by Rafael González-Val and Miriam Marcén

Sustainability 2019, 11(14), 3770; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11143770 - 10 Jul 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3006

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the effects of productive specialization and productive diversity on employment growth at the local level during the Great Recession in Aragon, a NUTS II region in Spain. This region is characterized by (i) a high population density in the capital city (around half of the total population), giving rise to a very uneven population distribution and therefore a lot of small cities and municipalities, and (ii) a large proportion of small businesses (95% of the firms in this region have fewer than ten employees). We use annual data from 2000 to 2015 and panel data models, and grouped local business activities into three main categories: industry, construction and services. Our results show that, during this period, local specialization in any of these activities hurt local employment growth, whereas diversity had a non-significant effect on employment growth. Only in the case of services did we obtain a positive effect of diversity on local employment growth, which was restricted to the most populated cities (i.e., cities with more than 3000 inhabitants). Therefore, only diversity in services activities located in large cities contributed to employment growth during the Great Recession. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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18 pages, 1187 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Economic Development and Female Labour Force Participation: The Case of European Union Countries

by Amaia Altuzarra, Catalina Gálvez-Gálvez and Ana González-Flores

Sustainability 2019, 11(7), 1962; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11071962 - 2 Apr 2019

Cited by 36 | Viewed by 9311

Abstract

In this paper, we studied the relationship between female labour force participation and economic development in the 28 countries of the European Union during the period 1990–2016. The analysis was carried out from two different viewpoints: first, we studied all the countries of the EU-28, and second, the evidence was disaggregated into two groups of countries: old (EU-15) and new (EU-13) member estates. The data used came from the World Bank open data repository and Eurostat. The methodology used consisted of the estimation of static (Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed Effects (FE)) and dynamic (generalized moments model—GMM) models. Results for all European countries (EU-28) were consistent with the hypothesis which suggests the existence of a U-shaped relationship between female labour force participation and economic development. When the sample was broken down into groups, we found evidence that confirms the feminization hypothesis for the new countries of the EU, but not for the old ones. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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12 pages, 678 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Differentiated Influence of Technology Absorption on Regional Economic Growth in China

by Ming Yi, Xiaomeng Fang and Yao Zhang

Sustainability 2019, 11(2), 450; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020450 - 16 Jan 2019

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4276

Abstract

Technology absorption based on technology input–output is a main source of regional economic growth, and it can be one of the mechanisms to achieve regional sustainable development. In order to explore the influence mechanism and effects of regional technology absorption on economic growth, this paper classifies 30 provinces (including municipalities and autonomous regions) in China into technology input areas and technology output areas. With economic data from 2000 to 2016, this paper adopts the Hausman test and conducts an empirical study using regression analysis of fixed effect and random effect. The result shows that: (1) compared to technology output areas, technology absorption has a greater effect on economic growth in technology input areas; and (2) in general, all of these different types of technology transactions contribute to promoting regional economy. In technology output areas, the promoting effects of four different technology transactions on economic growth are sequenced from strong to weak as following: technology development, technology consultation, technology service, and technology transfer, while in the technology input areas, the promotion effect on economic growth from strong to weak is technology development, technology service, technology consultation, and technology transfer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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14 pages, 1541 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Socioeconomic Impacts of Forest Fires upon Portugal: An Analysis for the Agricultural and Forestry Sectors

by Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho

Sustainability 2019, 11(2), 374; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020374 - 13 Jan 2019

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 4782

Abstract

Recent forest fire activity has resulted in several consequences across different geographic locations where both natural and socioeconomic conditions have promoted a favorable context for what has happened in recent years in a number of countries, including Portugal. As a result, it would be interesting to examine the implications of forest fire activity in terms of the socioeconomic dynamics and performance of the agroforestry sectors in the context of those verified in the Portuguese municipalities. For this purpose, data from Statistics on Portugal was considered for output and employment from the business sector related to agricultural and forestry activities, which were disaggregated at the municipality level, for the period 2008–2015. Data for the burnt area was also considered in order to assess the impact of forest fires. The data was analyzed using econometric models in panel data based on the Keynesian (Kaldor laws) and convergence (conditional approaches) theories. The results from the Keynesian approaches show that there are signs of increasing returns to scale in the Portuguese agroforestry sectors, where the burnt area increased employment growth in agricultural activities and decreased employment in the forestry sector. Forest fires seem to create favorable conditions for agricultural employment in Portuguese municipalities and the inverse occurs for forestry employment. Additionally, some signs of convergence were identified between Portuguese municipalities for agroforestry output and employment, as well for the burnt areas. However, signs of divergence (increasing returns to scale) from the Keynesian models seem to be stronger. On the other hand, the evidence of beta convergence for the burnt areas are stronger than those verified for other variables, showing that the impacts from forest fires are more transversal across the whole country (however not enough to have sigma convergence). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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19 pages, 1464 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Strategic Cross-Border Water Pollution in Songliao Basin

by Guanyi Yu, Chunliang Xiu, Changsong Zhao and Zhengliang Ding

Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4713; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124713 - 11 Dec 2018

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4608

Abstract

This paper studies the two-fold impacts of environment regulation related to local officer promotion and water quality assessment of cross-border sections within the framework of the 11th Five-Year Plan. We employ the difference-in-difference (DID) and difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) models to a unique dataset on water polluting activities in Songliao Basin counties from 2003 to 2009. Empirical results show that on one hand, regulation and water pollution are negatively correlated, the stricter the regulation is, the less water pollution happens. On the other hand, as no explicit accountability and synergetic governance system were set up by the 11th Five-Year Plan, prefecture-level municipal governments tend to exert the least enforcement efforts in the most downstream counties. We find the evidence of strategic water polluting that the overall output value, new entry into and old business water polluting industries are significantly higher in the most downstream county of a prefecture-level city, relative to other similar counties. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regions and Economic Resilience)

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