Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography Institute News
New Publication: The Regional Economic Impact of the Great Recession in Germany

New Publication: The Regional Economic Impact of the Great Recession in Germany

© C. Hundt und L. Grün, 2022

In their new article "Resilience and specialization - How German regions weathered the Great Recession," Christian Hundt and Lennart Grün explore the economic development of German Spatial Planning Regions during and after the Great Recession of 2008/2009. Using an exploratory-descriptive approach, the authors investigate possible links between regional economic structure and regional growth between 2007 and 2017. The results show that regions with high specialization, a high share of industry, and a strong export orientation were particularly hard hit by the recession, but also recovered particularly quickly afterward. The rapid recovery of these regions meant that they were able to catch up significantly in terms of GDP per capita during the crisis years, especially compared to metropolitan regions, which suffered from both high vulnerability and weak recovery. In this respect, the crisis led to a tendency for economic disparities between resilient and less resilient regions to decrease. Another finding is that, despite the strength of the recessionary shocks, regional economic structures did not change fundamentally either during or after the crisis. The multifaceted reasons for this are discussed in detail in the article. The article will be published in the journal "ZFW - Advances in Economic Geography" (formerly "Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie") and is already available online.

Hundt, C.; Grün, L. (2022): Resilience and specialization – How German regions weathered the Great Recession. In: ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, online first. DOI: 10.1515/zfw-2021-0014

Published by Christian Hundt and Lennart Grün