Economic Resilience and Regionally Differentiated Cycles: Evidence From a Turning Point Approach in Italy

Abstract

The literature on regional resilience often neglects the timing of recessions and simply uses national cycles. Region-specific cycles and turning points might bias the results, however, and affect the choice of regions to target with policies. This paper investigates the geography and determinants of regional resilience with a regional turning point approach, using data for Italy, a country with a well-known and sizeable regional divide. The results show that the timing of regional cycles varies substantially and that the detected resilience determinants are different across the two approaches, implying that the policy levers may be wrongly estimated with national turning points.