IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa03p199.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The regionalization of labour markets by modelling commuting behaviour

Author

Listed:
  • Frank Cörvers
  • Maud Hensen

Abstract

There hardly exists any country in which regional employment issues do not play an important role in economic planning or policy making. The need for models to carry out policy analyses in this field of research is evident. In order to analyse regional labour markets administratively defined areas are usually taken as units of analysis. On the one hand, labour market policies targeted on these administratively defined areas may be less effective if the administrative boundaries do not follow functionally linked labour market areas. On the other hand, it may be very difficult for local planning authorities to set policy goals with regard to another subdivision of areas than the administrative subdivision. Therefore it is important for policy makers at the regional level to be aware of the functional interdependencies between regions, in particular when these regions are not functional regional labour markets. In our paper we subdivide functional regional labour markets by modelling the commuting behaviour of workers in the Netherlands. For a better understanding of regional labour markets and their dynamics, commuting behaviour of workers is analysed by using the distance travelled from home to work (see Isserman et al., 1986). The commuting decision depends on workers’ background characteristics like age, sex, education, income or region-specific variables. By analysing the impact of these determinants on commuting, we are able to compare the average commuter of a country, in our case the Netherlands, with the commuters at the municipality level. By taking a closer look at the commuters at the municipality level, we find municipalities in which commuters act significantly different from the average commuter. These differences in commuting behaviour at the municipality level give an impression of the relative labour market attractiveness of the municipalities and thereby of the ratio between labour demand and supply in regions. We use these differences in commuting behaviour to regionalize the labour market. Although many studies have analysed commuting behaviour, a regionalization of labour markets with respect to different groups of workers has rarely been made. In the paper commuting flows of different groups of workers are used to subdivide the national labour market into functional regional labour markets. Contrary to earlier research (for example Green et al. 1991), we prevent to use arbitrarily chosen cut-off points to regionalize the labour market. Instead, we model the commuting behaviour of individual workers and use statistical criteria to subdivide regional labour markets (see also Baumann et al. 1996). Moreover, we show that the resulting regionalization of the labour market strongly depends on the group of individual workers concerned in the analysis. For example, it is shown that workers travel on average 21,5 kilometres for the home-to-work journey and that this distance increases with the educational level of the commuters. Therefore the regional labour market for workers with a high level of education is relatively large. To perform our empirical analysis we use journey-to-work data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS, 2001).

Suggested Citation

  • Frank Cörvers & Maud Hensen, 2003. "The regionalization of labour markets by modelling commuting behaviour," ERSA conference papers ersa03p199, European Regional Science Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa03p199
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa03/cdrom/papers/199.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van den Berg, Gerard J & Gorter, Cees, 1997. "Job Search and Commuting Time," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(2), pages 269-281, April.
    2. Bartel, Ann P, 1979. "The Migration Decision: What Role Does Job Mobility Play?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(5), pages 775-786, December.
    3. Starrett, David, 1978. "Market allocations of location choice in a model with free mobility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 21-37, February.
    4. Lambert Van Der Laan & Richard Schalke, 2001. "Reality versus Policy: The Delineation and Testing of Local Labour Market and Spatial Policy Areas," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 201-221, March.
    5. Chiara Bentivogli & Patrizio Pagano, 1999. "Regional Disparities and Labour Mobility: the Euro‐11 versus the USA," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 13(3), pages 737-760, September.
    6. Jan Rouwendal & Piet Rietveld, 1994. "Changes in Commuting Distances of Dutch Households," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 31(9), pages 1545-1557, November.
    7. Jackman, Richard & Savouri, Savvas, 1992. "Regional Migration versus Regional Commuting: The Identification of Housing and Employment Flows," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 39(3), pages 272-287, August.
    8. J. M. Casado-Diaz, 2000. "Local Labour Market Areas in Spain: A Case Study," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 843-856.
    9. Schwanen, Tim & Dijst, Martin, 2002. "Travel-time ratios for visits to the workplace: the relationship between commuting time and work duration," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 573-592, August.
    10. Johann H. Baumann & Manfred M. Fischer & Uwe Schubert, 1983. "A Multiregional Labour Supply Model For Austria: The Effects Of Different Regionalisations In Multiregional Labour Market Modelling," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 53-83, January.
    11. Richard Jackman & S Savouri, 1992. "Regional Migration versus Regional Commuting: The Identification of Housing and Employment Flows," CEP Discussion Papers dp0057, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Wales, Terence J., 1978. "Labour supply and commuting time : An empirical study," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 215-226, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wouter Vermeulen, 2006. "Regional disparities in a small country? An analysis of regional unemployment and participation differentials in the Netherlands from 1975 to 2003," CPB Document 113.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Pierrard, Olivier, 2008. "Commuters, residents and job competition," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 565-577, November.
    3. Wouter Vermeulen, 2006. "Regional disparities in a small country? An analysis of regional unemployment and participation differentials in the Netherlands from 1975 to 2003," CPB Document 113, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    4. Wouter Vermeulen, 2005. "Regional disparities in a small country? An assessment of the regional dimension to the Dutch labour market on the basis of regional unemployment and participation differentials," ERSA conference papers ersa05p207, European Regional Science Association.
    5. Stefan Gruber, 2010. "To Migrate or to Commute?," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 2(1), pages 110-134, January.
    6. Chiara Castelli & Angela Parenti, 2020. "Commuting in Europe: An Inter-regional Analysis on its Determinants and Spatial Effects," Working Papers 2020.19, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    7. Thomas, T. & Tutert, S.I.A., 2013. "An empirical model for trip distribution of commuters in The Netherlands: transferability in time and space reconsidered," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 158-165.
    8. Castelli, Chiara & Parenti, Angela, 2020. "Commuting in Europe: An Inter-regional Analysis on its Determinants and Spatial Effects," 2030 Agenda 307985, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    9. Roberto Patuelli & Aura Reggiani & Sean Gorman & Peter Nijkamp & Franz-Josef Bade, 2007. "Network Analysis of Commuting Flows: A Comparative Static Approach to German Data," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 315-331, December.

    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. Natalia Presman & Arie Arnon, 2006. "Commuting patterns in Israel 1991-2004," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2006.04, Bank of Israel.
    2. Kronenberg, Kristin & Carree, Martin, 2010. "Job and residential mobility in the Netherlands: the influence of human capital, household composition and location," MPRA Paper 25840, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Echeverría, Lucía & Gimenez-Nadal, J. Ignacio & Molina, José Alberto, 2023. "Commuting in dual-earner households: International gender differences with time use surveys," Nülan. Deposited Documents 3932, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales, Centro de Documentación.
    4. Jos van Ommeren & Piet Rietveld, 2002. "Commuting, Spatial Search and Labour Market Bargaining," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 02-039/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. repec:elg:eechap:14395_22 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Natalia Presman & Arie Arnon, 2000. "Commuting Patterns in Israel," Regional and Urban Modeling 283600076, EcoMod.
    7. Belloc, Ignacio, 2021. "El tiempo de desplazamiento al lugar de trabajo en el Reino Unido: Diferencias entre asalariados y autoempleados [Commuting time in the United Kingdom: Differences between wage-earners and self-emp," MPRA Paper 108260, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Jim Millington, 2000. "Migration and Age: The Effect of Age on Sensitivity to Migration Stimuli," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(6), pages 521-533.
    9. Mitch Renkow & Dale Hoover, 2000. "Commuting, Migration, and Rural‐Urban Population Dynamics," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 261-287, May.
    10. Jean Flemming, 2018. "Costly Commuting and the Job Ladder," 2018 Meeting Papers 100, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Lorenz, Olga & Goerke, Laszlo, 2015. "Commuting and Sickness Absence," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113173, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. Gershenson, Seth, 2013. "The causal effect of commute time on labor supply: Evidence from a natural experiment involving substitute teachers," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 127-140.
    13. Jos Van Ommeren & Gerard J. Van Den Berg & Cees Gorter, 2000. "Estimating the Marginal Willingness to Pay for Commuting," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 541-563, August.
    14. Papps, Kerry L. & Newell, James O., 2002. "Identifying Functional Labour Market Areas in New Zealand: A Reconnaissance Study Using Travel-to-Work Data," IZA Discussion Papers 443, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. M. P. Drahun & I. V. Ivanouskaya, 2022. "Economic regionalization of Belarus. Determination of quantitative parameters of administrative units," RSUH/RGGU BULLETIN. Series Economics. Management. Law, Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), issue 2.
    16. Frank Corvers & Maud Hensen & Dion Bongaerts, 2009. "Delimitation and Coherence of Functional and Administrative Regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 19-31.
    17. Van Ommeren, Jos & Fosgerau, Mogens, 2009. "Workers' marginal costs of commuting," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 38-47, January.
    18. James Foreman-Peck & Laurian Lungu, 2009. "Fiscal devolution and dependency," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(7), pages 815-828.
    19. Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal, J. & Molina, Jose Alberto & Velilla, Jorge, 2018. "The commuting behavior of workers in the United States: Differences between the employed and the self-employed," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 19-29.
    20. Shields, Martin & Swenson, David, 2000. "Regional Labor Markets: The Relationship Between Industry Level Employment and In-commuting in Pennsylvania Counties," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 30(2), pages 1-14.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa03p199. 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: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    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.