SIZE AND SECTORAL SPECIALISATION: THE ASYMMETRIC CROSS-COUNTRY IMPACTS OF THE 2008 CRISIS AND ITS AFTERMATH
Harvey W. Armstrong
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Robert Read
Department of Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, UK
Correspondence to: Robert Read, Department of Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, UK.
E-mail: r.read@lancaster.ac.uk
Search for more papers by this authorHarvey W. Armstrong
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Robert Read
Department of Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, UK
Correspondence to: Robert Read, Department of Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, UK.
E-mail: r.read@lancaster.ac.uk
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
This paper analyses the cross-country impacts of the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent recovery process, with a specific focus on small economies. Key growth volatility variables highlight the critical exposure of small economies to the transmission of exogenous shocks owing to their high degrees of trade openness and inherent output and export specialisation, notably in financial services and tourism. These factors also constrain the mitigation of exogenous shocks giving rise to greater growth volatility. The paper demonstrates systematic asymmetries between countries with respect to the impact of the crisis and its persistence according to their size and patterns of sectoral specialisation. Small tourism-dependent economies and nonsovereign entities were particularly adversely affected although an offshore financial sector partly mitigated the impacts. The robustness of the findings is examined further in the appendix with regard to truncation problems arising from the use of international datasets. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study were derived from the following resources available in the public domain:
European Union, Statistical Database, Luxembourg: Eurostat.
UN World Tourism Organisation, World Tourism Statistics, Madrid: UNWTO.
World Bank, World Development Indicators, Washington DC: World Bank.
WTO, Trade Profiles data, 2008.
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