Industrial structure or agency: What affects regional economic resilience? Evidence from resource-based cities in China

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the role of industrial structure in shaping regional economic resilience at different stages with evidence from resource-based cities (RBCs) in China. It decomposes economic resilience into an industrial structure effect and an agency effect and analyzes the impact of industrial structure in terms of diversification and specialization with a panel regression model. Our results indicate that for Chinese RBCs the overall economic resilience is mainly determined by the agency effect, while industrial structure in general has a negative effect. More specifically, industrial diversification has a positive effect, while specialization tends to weaken the economic resilience, especially in mining cities. This paper suggests that regional economic resilience research should avoid the narrow “structure matters” view by embracing a multi-scalar, multi-actor, contextually sensitive perspective incorporating the role of structure and agency.