How regions react to recessions: resilience and the role of economic structure

This paper examines how employment in the major UK regions has reacted to the four major recessions of the last 40 years, namely 1974–76, 1979–83, 1990–93 and 2008–10. The notions of resistance and recoverability are used to examine these reactions. The analysis reveals both continuities and significant changes in the regional impact of recession from one economic cycle to the next. Further, while economic structure is found to have exerted some influence on the resistance and recoverability of certain regions, in general ‘region-specific’ or ‘competitiveness’ effects appear to have played an equally, if not more, significant role