IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirb/v49y2022i2p654-670.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Automatic delimitation of labour market areas based on multi-criteria optimisation: The case of Spain 2011

Author

Listed:
  • Lucas Martínez-Bernabéu

    (International Economics Institute, University of Alicante, Spain)

  • José Manuel Casado-Díaz

Abstract

Labour market areas (LMAs) are a type of functional region (FR) defined on commuting flows and used in many countries to serve as the territorial reference for regional studies and policy making at local levels. Existing methods rely on manual adjustments of the results to ensure high quality, making them difficult to be monitored, hard to apply to different territories, and onerous to produce in terms of required work-hours. We propose an approach to automatise all stages of the delineation procedure and improve the final results, building upon a state-of-the-art stochastic search procedure that ensures optimal allocation of municipalities/counties to LMAs while keeping good global indicators: a pre-processing layer clusters adjoining municipalities with strong commuting flows to constrain the initial search space of the stochastic search, and a multi-criteria heuristic corrects common deficiencies that derive from global maximisation approaches or simple greedy heuristics. It produces high quality LMAs with optimal local characteristics. To demonstrate this methodology and assess the improvement achieved, we apply it to define LMAs in Spain based on the latest commuting data.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucas Martínez-Bernabéu & José Manuel Casado-Díaz, 2022. "Automatic delimitation of labour market areas based on multi-criteria optimisation: The case of Spain 2011," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(2), pages 654-670, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:49:y:2022:i:2:p:654-670
    DOI: 10.1177/23998083211021104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23998083211021104
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/23998083211021104?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. José Manuel Casado-Díaz & Lucas Martínez-Bernabéu & Francisco Rowe, 2017. "An evolutionary approach to the delimitation of labour market areas: an empirical application for Chile," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 379-403, October.
    2. Christopher S Fowler & Leif Jensen, 2020. "Bridging the gap between geographic concept and the data we have: The case of labor markets in the USA," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(7), pages 1395-1414, October.
    3. Xiaoyan Mu & Anthony Gar-On Yeh, 2020. "Regional delineation of China based on commuting flows," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(3), pages 478-482, May.
    4. Alexandra Wicht & Per Kropp & Barbara Schwengler, 2020. "Are functional regions more homogeneous than administrative regions? A test using hierarchical linear models," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(1), pages 135-164, February.
    5. Yao Shen & Michael Batty, 2019. "Delineating the perceived functional regions of London from commuting flows," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(3), pages 547-550, May.
    6. M. Pilar Alonso & Asunci�n Beamonte & Pilar Gargallo & Manuel Salvador, 2015. "Local labour markets delineation: an approach based on evolutionary algorithms and classification methods," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(5), pages 1043-1063, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Viviana Carriel & Marcelo Lufin & Manuel Pérez-Trujillo, 2022. "Do workers negative self-select when they commute? Evidence for the Chilean case of long-distance commuting," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 69(1), pages 255-279, August.
    2. Lucas Martínez‐Bernabéu & José Manuel Casado‐Díaz, 2021. "Standard modularity is unsuitable for functional regionalization of spatial interaction data," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(5), pages 1323-1330, October.
    3. Xiaoyan Mu & Anthony Gar-On Yeh & Xiaohu Zhang & Jiejing Wang & Jian Lin, 2022. "Moving down the urban hierarchy: Turning point of China’s internal migration caused by age structure and hukou system," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(7), pages 1389-1405, May.
    4. Angelo Cavallo & Antonio Ghezzi & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2021. "Small-medium enterprises and innovative startups in entrepreneurial ecosystems: exploring an under-remarked relation," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 1843-1866, December.
    5. Goya, Daniel, 2022. "Marshallian and Jacobian Externalities in Creative Industries," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 11962, Inter-American Development Bank.
    6. Francisco Rowe, 2017. "The CHilean Internal Migration (CHIM) database: Temporally consistent spatial data for the analysis of human mobility," REGION, European Regional Science Association, vol. 4, pages 1-6.
    7. Klapka, Pavel & Kraft, Stanislav & Halás, Marián, 2020. "Network based definition of functional regions: A graph theory approach for spatial distribution of traffic flows," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    8. Timothy J. Bartik, 2021. "How Long-Run Effects of Local Demand Shocks on Employment Rates Vary with Local Labor Market Distress," Upjohn Working Papers 21-339, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    9. Stephan Brunow & Ramona Jost, 2023. "Being a long distance out-commuter or home employee in a rather peripheral region evidence of a German federal state," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 43(2), pages 317-342, August.
    10. Scarborough, William J. & Crabbe, Rowena, 2021. "Place brands across U.S. cities and growth in local high-technology sectors," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 70-85.
    11. Andrés Vallone & Coro Chasco, 2020. "Spatiotemporal methods for analysis of urban system dynamics: an application to Chile," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 64(2), pages 421-454, April.
    12. Ulrike Unterhofer & Conny Wunsch, 2022. "Macroeconomic Effects of Active Labour Market Policies: A Novel Instrumental Variables Approach," Papers 2211.12437, arXiv.org.
    13. Yuanting Ma & Yong Sun & Futian Weng & Yan Xu, 2023. "An Identification of Industrial Functional Zones Based on NLP: Evidence From Online Commercial Registration Data," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(1), pages 21582440231, February.
    14. Zhang, Yuerong & Marshall, Stephen & Manley, Ed, 2021. "Understanding the roles of rail stations: Insights from network approaches in the London metropolitan area," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    15. Julio A. Berdegué & Tatiana Hiller & Juan Mauricio Ramírez & Santiago Satizábal & Isidro Soloaga & Juan Soto & Miguel Uribe & Olga Vargas, 2019. "Delineating functional territories from outer space," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 28(1), pages 1-24, December.
    16. Francisco Rowe, 2017. "Functional Labour Market Areas for Chile," REGION, European Regional Science Association, vol. 4, pages 7-9.
    17. Dani Arribas-Bel & Mark Green & Francisco Rowe & Alex Singleton, 2021. "Open data products-A framework for creating valuable analysis ready data," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 497-514, October.
    18. Macartney, Hugh & Nielsen, Eric & Rodriguez, Viviana, 2021. "Unequal worker exposure to establishment deaths," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    19. Zhang, Whitney, 2022. "Improving commuting zones using the Louvain community detection algorithm," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:49:y:2022:i:2:p:654-670. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.