In 2008, a severe economic crisis hit economies around the world. Its effects included a significant loss of GDP and employment which led to several social ills associated with recessions. However, the crisis did not impact all places with the same severity. This thesis investigates the crisis impact across GB Local Authority Districts during 2008-2014 within a framework that utilises the concept of economic resilience. However, this concept does not have a universally accepted definition or methodology of investigation. Hence, the study adopts an operational definition, comparing the conditions in local labour markets before and after the start of the recession. Using this method, a wide variation in resilience performance is identified across spatial areas. To identify the determinants of these differences, the study critically examines existing empirical studies and relevant theories. The factors identified range from past labour market performance to industrial structure, skills, demographics and other variables. The thesis then adopts an empirical method of investigation utilising a cross-sectional model. The results indicate that places which performed well before the start of the crisis have suffered deeper crisis impacts. However, the share of younger aged population and degree level qualification holders has mitigated the impact. The results are confirmed by robustness checks concerning the influence of outliers, migration and exploring the use of a composite indicator of resilience. It is the first time that a study of the crisis has focused on GB Local Authority Districts and comprehensively examined local labour markets. Moreover, the study makes a contribution by providing an operational definition and methodology for measuring resilience and empirically testing the impact of a range of determinants of resilience performance. The policy implications suggest a greater focus on skills and the attraction of younger aged workers through increased embeddedness of anchor institutions such as universities, as well as the inclusion of resilience as a core element of place-based policies.

Background: The current energy and inflation crisis presents a challenge for businesses in Europe. One of the countries that is especially affected by the crisis is Germany. Family firms are an important factor for the German and European economies, as they account for 65 to 80 percent of all European companies. Although family firms have been thoroughly researched, as presented by the current body of knowledge, the existing gap in the literature on family firm strategies during a crisis is significant, which is the basis for this thesis.  Purpose: This study aims to investigate German family firms' strategies in times of crisis, specifically the current inflation and energy crisis, and assesses how they help achieve economic resilience. Method: This thesis represents a qualitative and inductive research approach. Twelve case studies have been conducted using an inductive method to collect data for this exploratory study. The chosen data collection method for this thesis is qualitative interviews. The empirical data is analyzed following the models by Gioia et al. (2013) and Hair et al. (2020). The existing literature serves as a basis for this research approach.  Conclusion: The study concludes that this energy and inflation crisis affects family firms in Germany on different dimensions. The shock magnitude, the family capabilities, and the overall management of the family firms are key factors influencing the economic resilience of the company. The performance on each individual level leads to certain actions, such as leveraging networks, by the family firm to cope with this crisis.

The research concerning differences in duration of the Great Recession is limited and inconclusive. We define duration of crisis as the count of years lost due to the crisis, and estimate the determinants of crisis duration on the dataset of 54 developed and developing countries. This thesis contrasts with previous literature by employing Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to accommodate for the large amount of potential explanatory variables and to address model uncertainty. Moreover, an innovative measure of export competitiveness, which accounts for the changes in non-price factors such as quality, is used. The results bring suggestive evidence of positive impact of developed financial markets, high share of private consumption and improvements in export competitiveness. We also find positive effect of fiscal policy stimulus once it is controlled for the feedback loop of uncertainty which appears when heavily indebted countries finance fiscal stimulus through issuance of additional debt. Lastly, it needs to be concluded, that the results are not robust to all prior specifications. In particular, the more restrictive Beta binomial model prior shrinks the statistical significance of aforementioned results heavily. JEL Classification F12, F21, F23, H25, H71, H87 Keywords Great Recession, Crisis duration, Economic...

This dissertation examines the relationship between economic resilience, disaster experience, and smart growth policies at the local government level. The study is based upon three research questions that examine spatial distribution of economic resilience in Florida cities, and examines the impact of disaster experience, and smart growth policies adopted by local governments on economic resilience. Based upon the bounce-forward approach (Cowell, 2013; Klein et al. 2003), economic resilience is defined using three dimensions—economic stability, economic equity, and economic diversity. The spatial analysis is conducted by mapping economic resilience scores across 780 Census Designated Places in Florida through standard deviation method of classification, and conducting cluster-outlier analysis. Results suggest difference in economic resilience within coastal and inland communities—with higher scores mostly situated inland. East Central Florida, Tampa Bay, and South Florida were identified as high economic resilience clusters, and Northwest Florida was identified as low resilience cluster. Impact of disaster experience, and smart growth policies on economic resilience was examined based upon logic of focusing events by Birkland (1997, 2010). Data was collected from the U.S. Census, the National Climatic Data Center, and the Energy Sustainable Florida Communities Survey conducted by Florida State University in 2009. Results suggest significant association between disaster experience of communities and their level of economic resilience, highlighting the importance of community learning in building capacity for resilience after disasters. The results also highlight the need of balancing mitigation and adaptation strategies. Mixed-use development policies, green building certification, and energy savings policies were found to have a significant positive impact on economic resilience.

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Economic resilience has recently enjoyed increased popularity in academic discourse, especially after the 2008 Global Crisis played havoc across the globe, but is as of now still in its infancy: A commonly agreed upon definition is yet to be found, and papers devoted to this concept are still rather scarce. It is commonly known that the manufacturing industries in European economies have generally been in decline for decades, and that they have primarily been replaced by the services sector. It has however been argued in the past that due to relatively high sunk costs, there is increased incentive for investors to keep manufacturing enterprises afloat during difficult times as long as possible, making them less likely to go out of business compared to others, thereby minimizing the initial blow of an economic shock to the respective economy and subsequently foster recovery. These assumptions are being examined in this paper by analysing data from the EU-28 starting at the outbreak of the 2008 crisis until 2015, followed by an investigation of individual economies in greater detail. The results show that more industrialised economies tend to have fared better during the crisis years and also managed to recover sooner.