Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 27th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview General Session Author(s) Bogdan Andrei Moldovan Babes-Bolyai University Cluj Napoca Romania Pavel Alexandru, Title Urban – Rural Differences in the Economic Resilience of Romania’s North-West Region Communities File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Bogdan Andrei Moldovan Abstract At this time, Romania’s economy grows at a rate that exceeds most EU countries; however over the last 28 years the country has gone through harsh structural changes. During 2008-2011 period, the economic and fiscal crisis emerged, most important economic indicators fell sharply, and the majority of sectors suffered an important decrease in output and productivity. Central and local budgets were severely affected, as general deficit jumped in 2009, while Romania faced a problem with its large and expensive public sector. The recovery of Romanian local communities from the economic crisis was slow and painful, in a national context of uneven social and economic development level of communities. Resilience became in recent times a topic of major importance, as seen in a large number of policy papers and empirical studies. Being a multi-dimensional concept, resilience is a topic of interest for policy makers as well. The increased attention given to the study of resilience could offer communities instruments and answers in their attempt to recover from the shocks suffered. The deep economic and financial crisis from 2008 – 2011 has tested the capacity of Romanian local economies to respond to such events. In a context of widening development disparities and poverty levels between urban and rural areas, our paper is aiming at investigating the economic resilience of local communities from Romania’s North West (NW) Region. The objective of the paper is to develop a specific framework for assesing and quantifying community economic resilience (CER), based on previous research and study of existing literature. Further on, the framework will be used in measuring the resilience level of urban and rural communities from NW Region, observe eventual differences, develop a discussion based on the results obtained, and identify succes factors in absorbing economic shocks.
