Book excerpt: The years following the Great Recession have been marred by several alarming economic trends. The slow recovery of employment, very low productivity growth, and historic lows in inter-regional migration and new firm creation all raise concerns about the dynamism of the US economy. Traditionally, recessions have been periods of intensified economic change, and at best these changes improve aggregate productivity through creative destruction. Yet, the changes that occurred during the Great Recession do not appear on the surface to have had beneficial effects. In this dissertation, I examine the US economy during the Great Recession and recovery from a regional perspective to bring new insights into the decline in US economy dynamisms.