Urban or rural: Does it make a difference for economic resilience? A modelling study on economic and cultural geography in Romania

Abstract

This article aims at investigating and measuring the economic resilience of local communities (43 urban and 403 rural) in Romania. The study focuses on the implications of the deep economic and financial crisis from 2008 to 2011 and explores the capacity of Romanian local economies in the North-West region to respond to these events. The research consists of developing an appropriate framework for assessing and quantifying community economic resilience, based on previous research of existing literature, and of measuring local economic development through a composite indicator by aggregating a series of variables using principal component analysis. The results show some striking differences between urban and rural communities in terms of impact, recovery, and performance compared with a pre-crisis level. Through regression analysis we were able to not only identify the determinants/explanatory factors for high-impact resilience that helped the recovery after an economic shock, but also the resilience drivers for 'bouncing forward' after the crisis, for both urban and rural communities. Our findings show an interesting change in the regional economy: some economic activities from the large urban areas in Romania moved to the nearby rural areas.