Resilience to crisis and GDP recovery at county level in Romania

The paper focuses on the issue of regional resilience against the recent financial and economic crisis in the case of Romania, taking the county as territorial unit of observation. Based on the idea that the shock of a crisis impact spreads asymmetrically in the territory, with different contagion effects, the study advance a new approach of the speed and duration of GDP decline recovering. Data analysis showed that, at macroeconomic level, Romania has not proved resilient to the crisis impact, after two years of recession and a recovery period of 4 years succeeding barely in 2014 to return to the GDP level achieved in 2008. The research highlighted the differentiated recovery duration of the economic decline in territory, in 2014 many counties having to recover in the coming years remained GDP gaps, up to 10 pp or even more. The study paid a specific attention to the crisis impact on employment, focusing on R&D sector as revealing the endogenous growth generating potential at county level.