Theses and Dissertations Collection

We develop a quantitative, two-dimensional measure of regional economic resilience and apply it to monthly county-level employment data from 1990 to 2015 to estimate U.S. county economic resilience to the 2007-2009 national recession. This measure reflects aspects of existing single dimension measures of shock responses, like drop and duration, as well as the uneven rate of decline. We include the option of an additional step to adjust for expected variation based on pre-local recession behavior. We use this resilience measure in a structural equation model designed to explain variation in county economic resilience to the 2007-2009 recession in terms of the community capitals framework. While the model estimated produces mixed results, the process of constructing the model and representing the seven community capitals indirectly through the thoughtful selection of observed variables produced valuable insights. We conclude by discussing these observations and ideas for model improvement in future studies.