Towards more resilient economies in Alpine regions

Abstract

The economic crisis the world has faced since 2007 has had devastating effects on many regions to various degrees. How regions respond to economic shock depends on regional economic structure and performance, administrative capacity, resources, human capital, social capital, and other factors, and is perceived as resilience: the ability of a regional economy to withstand, absorb, or overcome an external economic stress. Because one of the future strategic goals for the Alpine Space Programme area is fostering its resilience, we studied the performance of Alpine regions in the pre- and post-crisis period in order to assess the effects of the economic crisis and to provide basic directions on how to make the Alps more resilient in the future. The results have revealed differences among three selected groups of regions as well as some country-specific characteristics of the regional response that can generally be seen in the weaker performance of some Italian and Slovenian regions.