How do various types of non-metropolitan regions react to economic shocks?

Abstract

There have been many studies focused on regional resilience and its particular determinants at regional level such as population size, industry mix, specialization/diversity, firm size structure, export orientation or institutions. Our research question is: which types of regions are more resilient: metropolitan or non-metropolitan regions, urban cores or hinterlands, peripheral, branch plant or single factory regions? These questions were examined in our case study of post-crisis (2009-2014) economic development of Czech city-regions. We propose a typology of city-regions based on particularities in economic structure, key actors and mechanisms of development. Eight main categories of Czech city-regions were distinguished: metropolitan cores, metropolitan hinterlands, medium-sized urban regions with metropolitan functions, peripheral city- regions, single factory city-regions dominated by a large domestic manufacturing firm, “ordinary” diversified industrial city-regions, lower and higher-tiered branch plant regions dominated mostly by foreign-owned manufacturing assembly plants. We conducted a quantitative analysis focused on differences among the above mentioned types of regions in the dynamics of post-crisis growth of value added and employment in agriculture, industry, construction and business services. Empirical results show that differences in resilience among particular types of regions were relatively small. Surprisingly, single-factory city-regions and higher-tiered branch plant regions exhibited the most rapid pace of recovery, while the metropolitan cores and hinterlands lagged behind significantly.