Economic resilience to shocks:implications for labour markets

The term economic resilience has become popular during the 2008 crisis and has remained at the forefront of research and policymaking since. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic makes resilience more relevant than ever, with all relevant stakeholders looking for ways to shield local economies and accelerate recovery.The WMREDI project ‘Economic resilience to shocks: implications for labour markets‘ aims to contribute to uncovering the determinants of local economic resilience and assist places to recover faster.As the first step in this effort, a document has been compiled to bring together the evidence base around local economic resilience. In it, we discuss the concept and measurement of economic resilience as well as the evidence on resilience determining factors. We group these into five interconnected realms:- Industrial ecosystems covering characteristics such as the specialisation and dynamism of local economies- Place characteristics representing path dependency and physical geography- Individual characteristics such as qualifications and demographics- Institutional infrastructure attributes such as the fitness of national and local institutional set-ups- Decision-making covers matters of agency and leadership.The document is expected to be a live resource that will be updated regularly. As a result, we welcome feedback on all aspects as well as resources to be added to the review. After all, achieving resilience requires a concerted effort across multiple scales and fields

Economic resilience - addressing the challenges to come:Policy Briefing

Economic crises have happened long before the great recession of 2008 and unfortunately will happen again in the future. Maybe not as bad as the 2008 one but they will happen. We can spend years discussing why recessions happen and we can use plenty of insights in psychology, economics as well as ideological arguments.This policy briefing is not about this. It is about preparing to face the negative consequences of a downturn, commonly known as resilience. With what we know, the policy recommendations for increasing local economic resilience are to:Recognise and promote the role of anchor institutions such as universities for increasing skills locally.- Identify the importance of amenities for attracting talent in different areas.- Motivate university-industry collaborations and cross-industry innovation- Create a place-based industrial strategy that will use local assets and pursue resilience enhancing growth.- Fund further research on resilience and promote the creation of local plans that explicitly address resilience.- Provide leadership guidance and foster effective institutions to cope with external shocks

Economic resilience to shocks:implications for labour markets

The term economic resilience has become popular during the 2008 crisis and has remained at the forefront of research and policymaking since. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic makes resilience more relevant than ever, with all relevant stakeholders looking for ways to shield local economies and accelerate recovery.The WMREDI project ‘Economic resilience to shocks: implications for labour markets‘ aims to contribute to uncovering the determinants of local economic resilience and assist places to recover faster.As the first step in this effort, a document has been compiled to bring together the evidence base around local economic resilience. In it, we discuss the concept and measurement of economic resilience as well as the evidence on resilience determining factors. We group these into five interconnected realms:- Industrial ecosystems covering characteristics such as the specialisation and dynamism of local economies- Place characteristics representing path dependency and physical geography- Individual characteristics such as qualifications and demographics- Institutional infrastructure attributes such as the fitness of national and local institutional set-ups- Decision-making covers matters of agency and leadership.The document is expected to be a live resource that will be updated regularly. As a result, we welcome feedback on all aspects as well as resources to be added to the review. After all, achieving resilience requires a concerted effort across multiple scales and fields

Creative Destruction? Creative firms, workers and residential gentrification

An established theoretical and case study literature discusses how the creative industries, and Creative City policies, may drive neighbourhood gentrification. However, this literature is inconclusive on the size of these links; whether creative activity drives neighbourhood change or follows it, and how this happens; and differences across creative firms, workers and activities, notably the role of artists and ‘the arts’ versus other creative sectors. This paper seeks to clarify these questions by testing the links between creative activity presence and residential gentrification. We explore these issues for neighbourhoods in England and Wales, using rich microdata on creative firms and workers for the 2000s and 2010s. We find that the overall links between localised creative activity and subsequent gentrification is small, even in the most creatively-dense neighbourhoods. The role of creative firms is more stable, but substantively smaller, than that of creative workers. The overall picture hides important variations across places, properties and activity types

Do creative industries generate multiplier effects? Evidence from UK cities, 1997-2018

The creative industries have received much attention from economic geographers and others, both for their propensity to co-locate in urban settings and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on the latter is surprisingly sparse. In this paper we explore the long-term, causal impacts of the creative industries on surrounding urban economies. Adapting Moretti’s local multipliers framework, we build a new 20-year panel of UK cities, using fixed effects and a historic instrument to identify effects on non-creative firms and employment. We find that each creative job generate at least 1.9 non-tradable jobs between 1998 and 2018: this is associated with creative business services employees’ local spending, rather than visitors to urban amenities such as galleries and museums. We do not find the same effects for workplaces, and find no causal evidence for spillovers from creative activity to other tradable sectors, findings consistent with descriptive evidence on the increasing concentration of creative industries in a small number of cities. Given the small numbers of creative jobs in most cities, however, the overall effect size of the creative multiplier is small, and shapes only a small part of non-tradable urban employment change. Overall, our results suggest creative economy-led policies for cities can have positive – albeit partial – local economic impact

Creative Clusters and Creative Multipliers: Evidence from UK Cities

Economic geographers have paid much attention to the cultural and creative industries, both for their propensity to cluster in urban settings, and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on the latter is surprisingly sparse. In this paper we explore the long-term, causal impacts of the cultural and creative industries on surrounding urban economies. Adapting Moretti’s local multipliers framework, we build a new 20-year panel of UK cities, using historical instruments to identify causal effects of creative activity on non-creative firms and employment. We find that each creative job generates at least 1.9 non-tradable jobs between 1998 and 2018. Prior to 2007, these effects seem more rooted in creative services employees’ local spending than visitors to creative amenities. Given the low numbers of creative jobs in most cities, the overall impact of the creative multiplier is small. On average, the creative sector is responsible for over 16% of non-tradable job growth in our sample, though impacts will be larger in bigger clusters. We do not find the same effects for workplaces, and find no causal evidence for spillovers from creative activity to other tradable sectors. In turn, this implies that ‘creative city’ policies will have partial, uneven local economic impacts. Given extensive urban clusters of creative activity in many countries, our results hold value beyond the UK setting

Creative Clusters and Creative Multipliers: Evidence from UK Cities

Economic geographers have paid much attention to the cultural and creative industries, both for their propensity to cluster in urban settings, and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on the latter is surprisingly sparse. In this paper we explore the long-term, causal impacts of the cultural and creative industries on surrounding urban economies. Adapting Moretti’s local multipliers framework, we build a new 20-year panel of UK cities, using historical instruments to identify causal effects of creative activity on non-creative firms and employment. We find that each creative job generates at least 1.9 non-tradable jobs between 1998 and 2018. Prior to 2007, these effects seem more rooted in creative services employees’ local spending than visitors to creative amenities. Given the low numbers of creative jobs in most cities, the overall impact of the creative multiplier is small. On average, the creative sector is responsible for over 16% of non-tradable job growth in our sample, though impacts will be larger in bigger clusters. We do not find the same effects for workplaces, and find no causal evidence for spillovers from creative activity to other tradable sectors. In turn, this implies that ‘creative city’ policies will have partial, uneven local economic impacts. Given extensive urban clusters of creative activity in many countries, our results hold value beyond the UK setting