Ranking regional economic resilience in the EU

This chapter explores the Regional Economic Resilience Indicator (RERI) which has been developed as a composite indicator of the resilience capacity of a region. It accounts for elements of the “resilience life cycle”, categorizing them into four dimensions: introduction, growth, maturity, decline or renewal. These dimensions are then linked to the respective slow burning and shock wave processes. The investigation reveals that resilience capacities accumulated in the long-run may not be adequately managed and may even be lost in the short-run when the shock intervenes. Precisely, EU-13 countries have been able to keep the capacities accumulated during the slow burning and use them to recover after the crisis, while EU-15 experienced greater difficulties in dealing with the shock, deteriorating or not perfectly using the capacities accumulated.