Christian Reiner
Effects of the ”Great Recession“ on regional unemployment rates. The case of Germany, France and theUnited Kingdom.
S. 114-133
Contrary to the already encompassing literature on the differentiated
effects of the “Great Recession” on states, this paper
takes a regional economic perspective. To answer the research question
which factors might explain the spatially unequal development of
unemployment rates at the regional level, acrosssection data-set is
used. Percentage point increase of regional unemployment rates between
2008 and 2009 is used as the dependent variable and a set of regional
and national variables as independent variables; a multiple linear
regression model is estimated. After detecting spatial autocorrelation
for the OLS-estimators, the modelis re-estimated and a spatial error
model with ML-estimators is computed. It turns out that the share of
low-skilled employees has a significant positive effect on the change
of regional unemployment rates. Furthermore, financial centres showed a
significantly better resilience than other regional economies. Because
of the strong influence of national variables in these models, separate
models are estimated for France and the UK. It is shown that the same
variables have quite different effects. This questions the existence of
a common explanation for regional unemployment dynamics in Europe.
Keywords: regional employment, ”Great Recession”, Europe, spatial econometries
schließen