Global  Economic Crisis  and Employment in Croatian Regional Centres

Proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences and Humanities

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Global  Economic Crisis  and Employment in Croatian Regional Centres

Zdenko Braičić

ABSTRACT: 

The aim of this research is to analyse the change of employment in Croatian regional centres under conditions of global economic crisis. Shift-share analysis conducted in three relevant periods, which include the period before the global economic crisis (between 2001 and 2008), the period of global economic crisis (2008 to 2014) and the period of the recovery of Croatian economy (after 2014) was applied in this research. During the Shift-share analysis a calculation of its three components – regional, structural and local component – was conducted for a total of 16 cities considered as Croatian regional centres. This procedure was used to evaluate the development of regional centres for each of the listed periods, taking into consideration the development of the entire national area. It was determined that almost all regional centres had more favourable economic movements than national average in the years before the economic crisis. This trend was changing during the economic crisis when many regional centres recorded significant fall in the number of employed in comparison to national level. Furthermore, since the beginning of global crisis there is a continuous fall in the local competitiveness of regional centres. While almost all regional centres had a positive value of the local component in the period before the economic crisis, during the years of economic crisis only half of Croatian regional centres managed to keep a positive value of this component. However, the fall in local competitive advantages of regional centres continued during the last period as the Croatian economy is gradually recovering from the consequences of economic crisis.

keywords: Croatian economy; economic geography; local competitiveness; shift-share analysis; towns.