Regional resilience during COVID-19: evidence from Colombian exporting clusters

This study characterises the geography of Colombian exporters and their response to the COVID-19 crisis. We define exporting clusters within departments using bipartite network analysis and community detection tools. The methodology empirically detects product communities – groups of products that are strongly related – which are compared with an alternative taxonomy of industrial clusters, and clusters exporting firms by considering their exports within these taxonomies. We define these groups of specialised firms localised in departments as exporting clusters. We then examine whether belonging to an exporting cluster can enhance firms’ trade margins. We find that clusters do not automatically improve firms’ trade margins and that there are differences in how firms react to a crisis within clusters. Our analysis contributes to regional studies by shedding light on the potential of exporters’ agglomerations to navigate and recover from crises and outlining critical firm characteristics that can strengthen regional resilience.