Measuring Economic Resilience through Industrial Portfolio: The Cases of New EU Member States Since 2004

Abstract

The relevance of economic resilience topic is increasingly growing, still mixed results prevail in academic research. Resilience research typically concentrates on the Western European region. The research gap appears in focus towards the East since the concept of economic resilience is context dependent. By adapting the calculation mechanism of Martin and Gardiner (2019) to national level, we empirically analysed the economic resilience of 10 Southern and Eastern European countries between 2004 and 2020. We found common competition-related structural changes suggesting where to look for possible consistencies when analysing resilience: countries rarely change industrial portfolios when resist to shocks, unless specific or longer lasting production chain disruptions occur; individual properties dominate when countries recover from shocks, although common industrial portfolio shifts evident in manufacturing, and real estate industries. Results provide an original methodology and initial basis for the development of nation-specific policies to increase economic resilience and structural reforms effectiveness.