Unlocking Regional Economic Resilience With Technological Network Robustness: Evidence From China

ABSTRACT This paper elaborates a view on technological network robustness as a capability related to knowledge recombination in times of shocks, so as to explore its effects on regional economic resilience. Based upon panel analyses of technological co‐occurrence networks of Chinese prefectures following the 2008–2009 financial crisis, we find that: (1) regions with robust technological networks perform better in economic resilience; (2) the underlying causal mechanism of this positive effect is that robust technological networks, characterized by homogeneously distributed betweenness centrality among nodes, mitigates the risk of regional knowledge connection disruptions during shocks, thereby enhancing the region's ability to develop new growth paths.