Unemployment resistance across EU regions: the role of technological and human capital

Abstract We investigate the unemployment impact of the 2008 crisis to study the relationship between economic and technological resilience in 248 European Union regions. For economic resilience we measure the difference between the level of unemployment rate before crisis and the level of unemployment rate at its peak after the crisis — i.e. the unemployment resistance. Using European Patent Office patents, we look at all technological crises in each region since 1978 and build a variable of technological resilience measuring the historical ability of a region to maintain its level of knowledge creation in the face of adverse shocks — i.e. the technological resistance. We find that technological resistance is a good predictor of unemployment resistance. In particular, our results show that (1) important interaction effects exist between technological resistance and human capital, (2) technological resistance and the level of human capital are less effective in protecting female and elder adult workers during an economic crisis and (3) important country level effects are present.