Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Resilience During the Great Recession. The Case of Italy

The 2007 economic shock had a strong impact in Italy, hampering the efforts to reduce the regional disparities. Using the concept of resilience, the aim of the paper is twofold: first, to explore the resilience regional determinants; second, using a spatio-temporal approach, to analyze if resilience is not only a regional attribute, but also a process influenced by the geographical localization. Results highlight that Italy is polarized in two clusters: the first one composed by resilient regions and a second one grouping the non-resilient regions. The first one, the more dynamic, has been able to resist and recover after the shock, while the latter one has been trapped in a less dynamic and less competitive socio-economic model. This polarization not only remains after the shock, but it becomes stronger.