What Matters for Regional Economic Resilience Amid Multi Shock Situations: Structural or Agency? Evidence from Resource-Based Cities in China

Abstract

This paper contributes to the study of regional economic resilience by analyzing the characteristics and mechanisms of resilience under different shock situations. The paper focuses on the resistance dimension of resilience and analyzes the mechanisms of influence from structural and agency-based factors. Our findings reflect that the regional economic resilience characteristics of resource-based cities in China in response to the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic vary significantly. We find that the economic resilience has positive spatial autocorrelation characteristics. The regions with strong ability to deal with the shocks can promote resistance in the surrounding regions through their spatial spillover effect. Both structural and agency-based factors play significant roles in regional economic resilience under different shock situations, but the direction of the effect varies significantly. The agency-based factors have a more important role in regional economic resilience. The findings suggest that the nature of different shock situations deserves greater attention in the analysis of regional economic resilience. The mechanisms of structural and agency-based factors may change under different shock situations, and the spatial correlation characteristics of regional economic resilience and the spatial spillover effects should be taken into consideration.