Filippo Di Pietro (p), Patrizio Lecca , Simone Salotti

Bogdana Neamtu

see extended abstract

Vladimir Klimanov (p), Anna Mikhaylova

Bogdana Neamtu

In this research supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No. 18-010-00771), we determined the nature and degree of resilience for different types of Russia’s regions to the impact of geopolitical, economic, social, technological, and other internal and external factors in the face of global challenges. Based on the analysis of panel data for 75 regions from 2007 to 2016, there are significant differences in the dynamics of indicators. In general, the degree of exposure to the negative effects of crises is higher in non-resilient regions than in resilient ones.
To conduct the study, a database was compiled of 17 indicators reflecting the complex socio-economic development of Russia’s regions. Part of the indicators was selected based on the concept of the Resilience Index (Resilience Capacity Index) developed by K. Foster (2007) and adapted to many studies of regional resilience (Pendall et al., 2008; Simmie, Martin, 2010; Szitasiova et al., 2018). In addition, such indicators as entrepreneurial activity and unemployment rate (Boschma, 2015), innovative activity of organizations (Clark et al., 2010) and others are analyzed.
In general, the results of a number of foreign studies also link the stability of the regions with their ability to adapt and withstand crises. For example, such conclusions were obtained using a similar methodology in studying the resilience of Slovakia’s regions, which, despite a small number, are characterized by a rather high degree of socio-economic differentiation (Szitasiova et al., 2018).
In further studies of the sustainability and resilience of Russia’s regions, a more global adaptation of the existing Western methodologies and the development of a new methodology that would fully take into account the much higher interregional socio-economic differentiation than in developed countries and use the cost ratios in various fields of activity.

Zizi Goschin (p)

Bogdana Neamtu

Many of the attempts at empirical analysing regional resilience to economic crises are based on labour market indicators, such as employment and unemployment. Unemployment rates have long stayed relatively low in Romania, even during economic crises, due to large work out-migration, employment in subsistence farming, early retirement, etc. Nevertheless, regional labour market inequalities persisted despite a long-run convergence trend. The economic crisis impacted the counties with different intensity, depending on their specific resilience, thus aggravating pre-existing regional problems and deepening the labour market disparities. In this context, we explored the long run convergence in regional unemployment rates, focusing on the effects of the recent economic crisis. The results at NUTS3 level indicate a significant impact of the crisis through a clear change in the beta convergence speed both during and post-crisis. Although initially the developed counties seemed less resilient, being hit harder by the recession (due to closer links with international commercial and financial flows), they were also the first to recover, exploiting their better economic resources.