Contributions of this PhD to the Conceptualisation of Resilience

The findings in this PhD have implications for the conceptualisation of regional economic resilience. The conceptualisation of regional economic resilience which is utilised and developed upon in this PhD is the conceptualisation presented in Martin et al. (2016), which is based on earlier work by Martin and Sunley (2014) and Martin (2012). Specifically this PhD focuses on the concepts of adaptive resilience and specifically it has focused on the use of causal economic models to provide insights into the determinants of resilience. It is the insights into the determinants of resilience which results in this PhD’s contribution to the conceptualisation of regional economic resilience. Two specific contributions are highlighted in this section. The first is the contribution to the discussion on industrial structural change and the second is on the introduction of the individual as the unit of analysis in regional economic resilience studies.

7.4.1 Industrial Structural Change

One of the central elements of Martin et al. (2016) conceptualisation of resilience is the discussion of reorientation which occurs prior to the recovery phase of a shock but post the resistance phase of the shock. In this phase Martin et al. (2016) and Martin and Sunley (2014) highlights that some form of readjustment takes place whereby “the region … move[s] into new industries and technologies. Successful regions will be those that are able to restructure and reorient their human and capital resources in this way - in effect to branch into related or entirely new paths of development – and hence to renew their resilience” (Martin and Sunley, 2014: pp. 26). This reorientation is central to the concept of ‘adaptive’ resilience. They also highlight that resilience is a recursive process, whereby reorientation of the economy can result in better resistance to shocks and that recovery can lead to reorientation etc. Martin et al. (2016) provide five broad categories into which the factors which shape regional resilience fall; (i) industrial and business structure, (ii) financial arrangements, (iii) agency and decision making, (iv) labour market conditions, and (v) governance arrangements. As noted by Martin et al. (2016) “isolating the contribution of the multifarious determinants [of] resilience would be a major task, assuming that the requisite data were even available” (pp 569). The contribution of this PhD is to the conceptualisation of the first of these five categories, industrial and business structure.

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Regarding the contribution made to this element of the conceptualisation of resilience this PhD has provided the first conceptualisation (to the authors knowledge) which has causally linked industry structure change to resistance and recovery which accounting for the recursive and endogenous nature of this industry structural change. Prior to this PhD much of the work focused on case study analysis and index analysis. However, the framework provided in this PhD allows for causal inferences to be drawn in relation to the role of structural change. This has been accomplished through the use of advanced spatial panel econometric techniques which allow for endogeneity to be controlled for.

The development made by this PhD thesis is to provide a framework whereby it is shown how to apply empirical estimation techniques to the conceptualisation of reorientation in industry structure to identify its impact on resistance and recovery. This is an advance on current conceptualisations as these have, to date, focused on case study or index approaches to assess whether there is a link between these factors. The application of an empirical technique which attempts to identify causal relationships provides an extension to the current state of the art conceptualisation of resilience.

7.4.2 The individual as the unit of analysis

The second conceptual contribution is the identification and utilisation of the individual as the unit of analysis in the resilience studies undertaken in Chapters 5 and 6. To date the analysis of regional economic resilience has used nations, administrative regions, cities, or functional urban regions, as the unit of analysis. However, as noted by Fingleton and Longhi (2013) by utilising the individual as the unit of analysis it allows for issues such as the role of gender and other individual-level characteristics to be examined as possible determinants of resilience.

The focus on the analysis of the individual in regional economics is not novel in and of itself as numerous authors have highlighted the benefits of doing so. Fingleton and Longhi (2013) highlight the increasing relevance of using the individual as the unit of analysis with reference to Garretsen and Martin's (2011) editorial in the Journal of Economic Geography which highlighted the importance of economic geographers considering the role of individual worker level heterogeneity in explaining regional variations in economic performance. Authors such as Ottaviano (2010), Van Oort et al. (2012), Ghani et al. (2013), and Jacobs et al. (2013) have described the advantages of utilising the lowest possible spatial scale of the individual or the firm when analysing issues of importance to economic geographers.

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This PhD has applied this approach of using the individual as the unit of analysis to the conceptualisation of regional economic resilience by focusing on individuals’ wages and employment outcomes. In doing so it has extended the conceptualisation of regional resilience, which has typically focused on economic output or aggregate employment, by focusing on outcomes at an individual level. This has allows for insights beyond the five afore mentioned resilience inducing factors proposed by Martin et al. (2016)50_{. The analysis in Chapters 5 and} 6 highlight that individual heterogeneity must also be considered, with factors such as individuals’ genders and union membership impacting their own resilience to shocks (and therefore the aggregate regions’ resilience to shocks). This suggests that the five factors identified in the conceptualisation of resilience by Martin et al. (2016) could be augmented to include a sixth factor, the composition of the individuals within the region. With corresponding subcategories (in a similar fashion to the sub-categories of the five previous headings) including gender, age profile, and educational profile.”