The purpose of this study is to examine whether entrepreneurship is an important factor of regional economic resilience. For this purpose, this study analyzes the regional economic resilience of the regions affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and the 2008-2009 economic recession. It is assumed that some regions in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas where different types of disturbances occurred are effective research areas to examine the role of entrepreneurship in the recovery process.From the dynamic panel analysis, this study finds that entrepreneurship is positively related to employment and population growth in the affected regions. In line with previous studies showing that entrepreneurship can contribute to economic growth, this study adds to the extant literature on the role of entrepreneurship by considering external shocks. However, this study reveals that entrepreneurship does not significantly affect per capita income growth. It reflects that the effect of entrepreneurship can differ according to the measurement used. From the quasi-experimental analysis, regions with high entrepreneurial activities show higher levels of employment and population than regions with low entrepreneurial activities after natural disasters. When other regional economic structures and the effects of hurricanes are controlled, the difference in the levels of employment and population is explained by entrepreneurship. Once the national economic recessions begin, however, the difference between high and low entrepreneurship counties disappears. This reflects that the role of entrepreneurship can differ according to the attributes of disturbances. Based on the empirical results, this study demonstrates that entrepreneurship can be an important element of regional economic resilience. To be specific, its role is conspicuous in employment and population growth after natural disasters. Furthermore, this study contributes to previous studies by illustrating that the effects of entrepreneurship depend on measurement and disturbances. With regard to empirical finding, this study suggests several policy implications that can increase regional economic resilience.

Providing a coherent and clear narrative, Creating Resilient Economies offers a theoretical analysis of resilience and provides guidance to policymakers with regards to fostering more resilient economies and people. It adeptly illustrates how resilience thinking can offer the opportunity to re-frame economic development policy and practice and provides a clear evidence base of the cultural, economic, political and social conditions that shape the adaptability, flexibility and responsiveness to crises in their many forms.

In economic geography, there is a tendency to view regional economies as an inter-connected and endlessly evolving system. The way in which different sectors interact with each other in a region significantly influences the performance and future development of a local economy. This dissertation is comprised of three essays on U.S. regional economies, focusing on their resilience in the context of globalization as well as sector employment growth in recent decades. By investigating the impacts of entrepreneurship and industrial structure on the development and future pathways of a local economy, I seek to reveal details about the mechanisms of regional economic development and resilience from an evolutionary perspective. The first two essays are about regional resilience against trade shocks. Different from previous literature in this area, these two articles study economic resilience from a new perspective of evolutionary economic geography, which emphasizes the ability to reconfigure economic structure and develop new growth pathways. The first essay proposes several mechanisms through which entrepreneurs can help to mitigate adverse trade shocks. Empirical results confirm that the adverse marginal impacts of trade shocks on job losses are dampened in regions with higher self-employment rates. The second essay studies how a regional economy converts the adverse impacts of import competition into a stimulus for developing new growth pathways. It is found that regions experiencing greater import competition are more likely to attract new industry entrants, which in turn may offer new growth opportunities and counteract the direct losses from trade shocks. The third essay uses data on U.S. Commuting zones to investigate the heterogeneous impacts of industrial variety on the development of different sectors. The results suggest that industrial variety has a greater contribution to employment growth in two types of sectors: manufacturing industries that are technologically intensive, and geographically-agglomerated industries. This suggests the roles of industrial variety in contributing to growth are principally sector-based, and significantly depend on region-industry specific conditions.

This Handbook provides a collection of high quality contributions on the state of the art in current debates around the concept of regional economic resilience. It provides critical contributions from leading authors in the field, and captures both key theoretical debates around the meaning of resilience, its conceptual framing and utility, as well as empirical interrogation of its key determinants in different international contexts.

The introduction of endogenous growth theory has led to new interest in the role of the entrepreneur as an agent driving technical change at the local regional level. This book examines theoretical and methodological issues surrounding the interface of the entrepreneur in regional growth dynamics on the one hand and on the other presents illuminating case studies. In total the book's contributions amplify understanding of such critical issues as the relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship, the entrepreneur's role in transforming knowledge into something economically useful, and knowledge commercialization with both conceptual and empirical contributions. The emergence of endogenous growth theory has unleashed a flurry of new hypotheses and related inquiries that have in turn created an exciting dynamic in the conceptual, theoretical and empirical foundations of the field. A central feature has been the recognition that local initiatives matter in how regions grow and adjust to changes and shocks. Moreover, it is the role of technical change, driven by entrepreneurs, that motivates these initiatives. This volume begins by outlining and explaining the theory and method behind entrepreneurship and development. This is followed by specific case studies of practice and policy. These cases are region specific, offering the reader concrete, empirically based research results. Scholars and students in economics, entrepreneurship and public policy will find this volume a valuable tool in understanding the latest research in regional economic development.

'Entrepreneurship had been high on the jobs growth and economic development agendas for many years and this edited book makes an important and timely contribution to the debate. . . the book is nicely poised to bring together space, innovation and economic growth linked together with entrepreneurship. . . This book provides an excellent and worthwhile insight into many of the issues with many contributions that significantly add to our understanding of entrepreneurship and regional development.' - Ronald W. McQuaid, Growth & Change

Coping with Adversity addresses the question of why some metropolitan-area regional economies are resilient in the face of economic shocks and chronic distress while others are not. It is particularly concerned with what public policies make a difference in whether a region is resilient. The authors employ a wide range of techniques to examine the experience of all metropolitan area economies from 1978–2014. They then look closely at six American metropolitan areas to determine what strategies were employed, which of these contributed to regional economic resilience, and which did not. Charlotte, North Carolina, Seattle, Washington, and Grand Forks, North Dakota, are cases of economic resilience, while Cleveland, Ohio, Hartford, Connecticut, and Detroit, Michigan, are cases of economic nonresilience. The six case studies include hard data on employment, production, and demographics, as well as material on public policies and actions. The authors conclude that there is little that can done in the short term to counter economic shocks; most regions simply rebound naturally after a relatively short period of time. However, they do find that many regions have successfully emerged from periods of prolonged economic distress and that there are policies that can be applied to help them do so. Coping with Adversity will be important reading for all those concerned with local and regional economic development, including public officials, urban planners, and economic developers.