The Measurement of Economic Resilience: A Proposal

Global crises (2008 and 2020) have determined insecure conditions in economic and financial systems. The recovery has been particularly slow in Europe compared to the USA, though a certain heterogeneity in the recovery speed was observed among European countries. Results from household surveys have highlighted that households are worried about their ability to recover from economic losses. The aim of this work is to propose a definition of economic resilience and a new measure, which can be calculated at individual or household level. The measurement suggested is based on the comparison of the levels of an economic resource observed over a period after a loss. The measure is proven to satisfy some desirable properties. An application of the proposed measures to the SOEP longitudinal dataset highlights the household characteristics that mostly affect economic resilience in Germany.