How did Regional Economic Structures in the EU Change During the Economic Crisis?

Summary:

10 years on, many countries and regions in the EU still bear the scars of the 2008/2009 financial crisis. Countries and regions have recovered at different rates and undergone different structural changes. While the asymmetric impact of the crisis across regions and sectors has had a short-term impact on concentration and specialisation patterns; long-term forces, such as global economic and supply chain integration, continue to shape the economic landscape of European regions.

In our empirical analysis, we describe the development of regional economic structures in terms of sectoral employment and production (gross value added) during the crisis. We focus on the location pattern of sectors (concentration), i.e. in which regions economic activities in a sector tend to be located, and the specialisation of regions, i.e. which sectors are particularly important in a region. Our analysis shows that the impact of the crisis on overall specialisation patterns appears rather limited, although some regions have been more affected than others. In addition, the general trend of sectoral location patterns in the EU becoming more similar over time has continued, albeit at a slower pace since 2009, especially in Central and East European Countries. In terms of sectors, employment and production concentration in the construction and manufacturing sectors, which displayed clustering before the crisis, have been dispersing since 2009. The data also show that regions with large employment losses during the crisis were mainly specialised in agriculture, low-tech manufacturing, construction and less-skilled services such as trade, accommodation/restaurants and transport. This suggests that local economic structures may have played a role in the economic resilience of regions during the crisis.

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