It is important to analyze the manifestations of the crisis at the regional level, which allows both regional (local) and national authorities to develop effective support tools. From this point of view, it is important to clearly understand which aspects of economic development the crisis has a key impact on, and whether such impact is uniform across different sectors and areas of economic development. Much attention is paid to the problem of assessing the state of the business environment. However, the main disadvantage of most of them is that they are sometimes difficult to conduct in terms of operational analysis and availability of open data. The object of research is the processes of studying the state of the region's economy. The subject of the research is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis on the region's economies. In the process of scientific research, we solved such tasks: identification of key problematic factors in relation to regional economic development, including caused by pandemic and lockdown; reliable, freely available and up-to-date sources of statistical information on regional economic development are identified; a comprehensive method of generalizing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis on regional economic development. We proposed to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis on the economic development of the regions of Ukraine on the example of Sumy region. The analysis is based on open data from static authorities, which periodically publish monthly and quarterly information. The study confirmed the serious negative impact of lockdown and pandemic on the economic development of the region in a number of key indicators: the index of industrial production, the volume of industrial products sold, freight turnover and passenger turnover. At the same time, we observe a generally neutral impact of the crisis on such regional indicators of economic development as the volume of commodity export and import transactions and the stability of retail trade.
The Impact of Economic Specialization on Regional Economic Development in the European Union: Insights for Formation of Smart Specialization Strategy
