A natural experiment

Indeed, the current debate on value chains is inconclusive or needs at least more nuance Altomonte et al. (2012) note for France that along a global supply chain shocks as well as recoveries can be magnified due to ‘inventory’ effects (the so-called bullwhip effect) , Wagner and Gelübke (2014) conclude for Germany that the  hypothesis that foreign multinationals are more volatile following a negative shock is not supported by their empirical research, while Behrens et al. (2013) conclude that value chains played a minor role in Belgium (van den Berg and Jaarsma, this special section take an intermediate position for The Netherlands).. It is, however, not the inconclusiveness of the debate that is interesting: it is the heterogeneity of country experiences in Europe that suggests ample scope for finding out more about (regional) resilience. This is the answer to the question ‘Why do the global economic shocks affect regions and their recovery differently?’ that we seek to address.

This special section aims to fill a gap in the regional resilience literature and to stimulate future spatial studies of resilience to include the international dimension in empirical analyses. It demonstrates the do-ability and relevance by the natural experiment of the global trade collapse that allows us to separate the effect of collapse upon event and ex post recovery because no ex ante resilience measures were taken. This is a great methodological advantage with respect to the literature on natural disasters and financial crises that is confronted with the difficulty of identifying resilience because of ex ante measures (prevention or inherent resilience measures) and ex post measures (recovery or adaptive resilience measures).

Heterogeneous economic resilience and the great recession's world trade collapse, Papers in Regional Science
Peter A.G. van Bergeijk,
Steven Brakman,
Charles van Marrewijk