Resilience Index and Mediterranean. Mapping of the Resilience Index of Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Greece at NUTS II Level. Investigating Its Correlation with the Distribution of Productive Sectors and Tourism Intensity for the Period 2018–2023

The degree of resilience of NUTS II geographical units is an important parameter for understanding and interpreting the fluctuation of local economies, especially in economic disturbance. Resilience records the response of four geographical areas of the Mediterranean to the restrictive measures during the period 2018–2023. The resilience of geographical areas is achieved through a modification of Martin’s resilience index using the GDP variable. It calculates both the degree of resilience at the point in time of the economic shock and over a brief period. An important conclusion of the study focuses on the positive correlation between resilience and the balanced distribution of employees between productive sectors. An important parameter is also the tourism sector, which seems to have a significant impact on the degree of resilience part of the geographical areas concerned, with the main feature being the limited response to the economic disturbance of the Covid-19 pandemic, accompanied by an elevated negative rate of change in GDP relative to the country as a whole and the emergence of a rapid recovery, which, however, cannot approach the previous equilibrium situation, i.e., the equilibrium point before the outbreak of the pandemic, at least in the medium term.