Resilience in the European Union: The Effect of the 2008 Crisis on the Ability of Regions in Europe to Develop New Industrial Specializations

This article adopts an evolutionary framework to the study of industrial resilience. We present a study on European regions and assess the extent to which the capacity of their economies to develop new industrial specializations is affected by the global economic crisis of 2008. We compare levels of industry entry in European regions in the period 2004–2008 and 2008–2012, i.e. before and after a major economic disturbance. Resilient regions are defined as regions that show high entry levels or even increase their entry levels after the shock. Related and unrelated variety exhibit a positive effect on regional resilience, especially on the entry of knowledge-intensive industries after the shock.