Assessing the economic resilience in central and eastern EU countries. A multidimensional approach

The concept of economic resilience has become a key topic in the economic literature since the crisis of 2008 and the current sanitary crisis brought back to the attention of researchers the need to identify the elements that allow the absorption of a shock and the economic recovery. In the paper, we study the economic resilience assessed by real GDP growth rate and employment rate for eleven CEECs, using annual data from 2000 to 2019. We include in our model 21 variables that reflect the economic, social and institutional dimensions for emphasizing the specificities of CEE countries. The empirical results show that most of CEE countries proved to be resilient either in both their economic output and employment (Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia), or in one of these (Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia). Only two countries appear to not have recovered in GDP growth rate and Employment rate (Estonia and Latvia). The analysis of countries specificities, using the principal component regression, highlighted that the social, economic and institutional framework of each country generated distinct responses in terms of resilience. The strengthening of the institutional dimension and the importance of education represent essential factors for the growth of economic resilience.