Economic Resilience of Regions under Crises: A Study of the Australian Economy

Courvisanos J., Jain A. and Mardaneh K. Economic resilience of regions under crises: a study of the Australian economy, Regional Studies. Identifying patterns of economic resilience in regions by industry categories is the focus of this paper. Patterns emerge from adaptive capacity in four distinct functional groups of local government regions in Australia, in respect of their resilience from shocks on specific industries. A model of regional adaptive cycles around four sequential phases – reorganization, exploitation, conservation and release – is adopted as the framework for recognizing such patterns. A data-mining method utilizes a k-means algorithm to evaluate the impact of two major shocks – a 13-year drought and the Global Financial Crisis – on four functional groups of regions, using census data from 2001, 2006 and 2011.