Graduation Semester and Year
Fall 2025
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Public and Urban Administration
Department
Public Administration
First Advisor
Alejandro Rodriguez
Second Advisor
Evan Mistur
Third Advisor
Jiseul Kim
Abstract
This quantitative study examines the impact of adaptive governance measures taken by county governments in Texas on their Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The measures were selected based on their fit to adaptive governance theory. The years from 2013 to 2023 are covered, as they encompass the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The measures included the number of special-purpose districts, publicly available budgets, the urban-rural continuum association, the presence of performance dashboards, audits, FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plans, and the number of county revenue sources. The year and county were utilized as a fixed effect to capture time trends such as federal stimulus or pandemic-related lockdown. The findings revealed that though the budgets, hazard mitigation plans, special purpose districts, and published dashboards were meaningful, the association with population size had the greatest impact on GDP. This suggests that the agglomeration effects of large urban areas play a significant role in their ability to respond to economic challenges in terms of GDP.
Keywords
Economic, Resilience, Adaptive, Governance, COVID, pandemic
Disciplines
Economic Policy | Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Bailey, Omar Wesley, "Governance Matters: Evaluating the Drivers of County-Level Economic Resilience in Texas Using Panel Data from the Post-COVID Recovery (2013-2023)" (2025). Public Affairs Dissertations. 237.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/publicaffairs_dissertations/237
Included in
Economic Policy Commons, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons