The economic resilience of the Spanish provinces: From recession to recovery

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the economic resilience of Spanish provinces and help to explain why some of them are much more resilient than others. To do so, the paper focuses on the recent, 2007–2009 economic crisis and computes a composite indicator (Resilience) made up of two sub-indicators: one for the recession period (Drop) and the other for the recovery period (Rebound). Then, it suggests some factors affecting resilience and, due to the presence of spatial dependence, applies a spatial econometric approach to assess them. The main conclusions are that the level of Resilience depends negatively on the shares of the construction and manufacturing sectors in GDP, and positively on the share of services and the openness degree. As for the Drop, it is important to stress that human capital emerges as a variable that has contributed to minimise the negative effect of the crisis.