Spatial differentiation and driving factors of economic resilience in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

Abstract

The 2008 global financial crisis had a huge impact on China's real economy, and inspecting the imbalance and differentiation mechanism of the regional economic recovery process after the crisis is conducive to providing a reference for promoting regional high-quality and sustainable development. Based on the multidimensional resilience measurement framework, this study comprehensively investigated the dynamic evolution process of economic resilience in the Yangtze River Economic Belt after the 2008 global financial crisis, and focused on the temporal variation characteristics and spatial differentiation patterns of resistance and resilience. On this basis, the fixed effect panel regression model was used to analyze the role of factors such as industrial development status, regional development foundation, level of opening up, government management level, and innovation environment on economic resilience. The study found that at the overall level, the resistance of the Yangtze River Economic Belt after the impact showed a trend of first rising and then declining and the overall performance was high, but the resilience showed a trend of decline-rise-decline and the overall performance was low. The fluctuations in export resistance and resilience were much greater than the fluctuations in the dimensions of GDP, industry, consumption, and employment. Regression models showed that diversity and related diversity and regional innovation capabilities, although limited in the process of resisting risks in the early stage of the crisis, were conducive to the rapid regional resumption of growth after the crisis, areas with strong government management capabilities may hinder economic recovery to a certain extent, and the ability to open up to the outside world has no significant impact on resistance and resilience.