Measuring urban economic resilience of two tropical cities, using impulse response analysis

The global urbanisation rate had increased rapidly from just 30% in 1950 to 55% in 2018, and it is projected to reach 68% by 2050. This ongoing urbanisation shows the importance of building resilient economies in dealing with complex external financial and public health shocks and disturbances. Although most growing cities are beginning to demonstrate dedication to integrating sustainable development goals, building economic resilience in cities remains a significant challenge. During the past crises, stronger economies have shown an apparent ability to recover from shocks relatively quickly. Nonetheless, the severe COVID-19 recession has unmasked superficial evidence of economic resilience while also identifying underlying vulnerabilities and economic weak-spots. Accordingly, this paper focuses on resilience as a non-equilibrium property of urban economic structures. Focusing on two tropical cities, the paper explores sources of volatility transmission as indicators of urbanisation change, by utilising orthogonal impulse- response (OIR) functions based upon the Cholesky decomposition. The findings suggest a metropolitan disadvantage concerning urban economic resilience predominantly from shocks on sources of urbanisation.