Scholars have long feared that regional economic specialization, fostered by freer trade, would make the European Union vulnerable to economic downturn. The most acute concerns have been over the adoption of the common currency: by adopting the euro, countries renounce their ability to meet an asymmetric shock with independent revaluations of their currencies. We systematically test the prediction that regional specialization increases vulnerability to economic downturn using a novel dataset that covers all of the EU’s subnational regions and major sectors of the economy between 2000 and 2013. We find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the most specialized regions actually fared better during the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Specialized regions performed worse only in states that remained outside the Eurozone. The heightened vulnerability of non-Eurozone states cannot be attributed to fiscal or social policy failures. Rather, our results suggest the common currency may have helped Eurozone members share risk. This bodes well for the resiliency of the EU, even as it navigates another economic downturn from the asymmetric impact of the novel coronavirus.

长期以来，学者们一直担心，自由贸易促进的区域经济专业化会使欧盟容易受到经济衰退的影响。最严重的担忧是对采用共同货币的担忧：通过采用欧元，各国放弃了通过独立重新评估其货币来应对不对称冲击的能力。我们使用涵盖 2000 年至 2013 年期间欧盟所有次国家区域和主要经济部门的新数据集系统地测试了区域专业化增加了对经济衰退的脆弱性的预测。我们发现，与传统观念相反，最专业化的区域实际上在 2008-09 年全球金融危机期间表现更好。只有在欧元区以外的国家，专业地区的表现更差。非欧元区国家的脆弱性加剧不能归因于财政或社会政策的失败。相反，我们的结果表明，共同货币可能帮助欧元区成员国分担风险。这预示着欧盟的弹性，即使它因新型冠状病毒的不对称影响而再次经历经济衰退。