Abstract
The impact that COVID-19 has had on the world economy has been dramatic with the variation in impact within countries being substantial and attributable to the industry focus of each region’s economy. Certain places were harder hit due to their industry mix, such as a greater dependence on international tourism, and some of them may have lingering effects, even as vaccines become widely available and economic activity returns to normal. The goal of this work is to develop an index tool to identify regions that are likely to face the greatest difficulty in economic recovery from the pandemic. Index design initially used U.S. data that reflect on regional economic resilience. The index was then applied to 5 additional countries with datasets that provided compatible resolution in terms of regional scale and employment by industry: the UK (Great Britain, specifically); Australia; New Zealand; Norway; and Ireland. The tool can provide policy makers important insights on which regions may require additional resources to fully recover from a pandemic or other unusual global impact.
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Data Availability
All data used in this study will be made available upon request to the authors.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Regional Studies Associated COVID-19 Grant Scheme.
Disclosure StatementThe authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.
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Irving, J., Waters, K., Clower, T., Rifkin, W. (2023). Pandemic Regional Recovery Index: An Adaptable Tool for Decision-Making on Regions. In: Celbiş, M.G., Kourtit, K., Nijkamp, P. (eds) Pandemic and the City. Footprints of Regional Science(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21983-2_13
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