Two decades of research on regional economic resilience: publication trends, conceptual approaches, methodological practices, and key resilience dimensions

Abstract

This paper assesses publication trends in the regional economic resilience literature in economic geography and regional studies. Through a scoping review, we develop a dataset of 204 articles published prior to 2026 with a corpus-defined lower bound of 2005. After examining publication trends and scholarly attention received by special issues, journals, articles, and authors, we turn to the conceptual approaches employed, research methods used, and the resilience dimensions examined. Our analysis reveals a disconnect: while the evolutionary perspective dominates conceptually, the robustness dimension at the heart of this perspective is empirically underexplored. We outline ways to advance the evolutionary approach.