Regional Economic Resilience of the Old Industrial Bases in China—A Case Study of Liaoning Province

Regional economic resilience provides a new perspective for explaining regional differences in response to recession shocks. This paper analyzed the regional economic resilience of Liaoning Province in China in terms of its resistance and recoverability dimensions from 1990 to 2015 and explored the determinants of regional economic resilience by constructing a spatial econometric model using panel data. There are three main findings. First, the level of regional economic resilience in Liaoning was low and its urban economy was more vulnerable to external shocks than that of the whole nation. Second, we found that factors such as the local governance arrangement, the regional innovation ability, and the level of economic diversification have significant positive effects on regional economic resilience. Factors such as the proportion of secondary industry and the GDP negatively affect regional economic resilience. Third, regional economic resilience demonstrates a spatial autocorrelation, and the improvement of economic resilience in the surrounding areas will lead to the decline of regional economic resilience.