Publication

Does new information technology change commuting behavior?

Our paper Does new information technology change commuting behavior written together with Sergejs Gubins and Jos van Ommeren is accepted in the Annals of Regional Science. It turned out to be nice paper with an interesting main message: commuting in total did not change under the advent of ICT. Our identification is interesting, albeit that it hinges upon a very strong idenfitication assumption. Apart from ICT trend in change of commuting do not differ amongst sector-job combinations.

Valuation of Ethnic Diversity: Heterogeneous Effects in an Integrated Labor and Housing Market

Our paper Valuation of Ethnic Diversity: Heterogeneous Effects in an Integrated Labor and Housing Market written together with Jessie Bakens is accepted in the Journal of Economic Geopraphy. Jessie and I worked quite hard on this and I am glad that we got the results. The abstract reads as follows: We estimate the heterogeneous impact of the scale, composition and consumer good-effect of ethnic diversity on individuals’ job and residential location.

Barriers of Culture, Networks, and Language

A new pubication is out in REGION with Zhiling Wang and Peter Nijkamp titled Barriers of Culture, Networks, and Language. A direct link can be found here , with the following abstract: Abstract Along with the increasing pace of globalization, recent decades faced a dramatically increase in international migrant flows as well. Compared to the flows of trade, capital and knowledge, we observe that contemporaneous complex institutional differences, historical backgrounds, and individuals’ diverse socio-demographic characteristics make the migrant workers’ choice of destination arguably much more uncontrollable.

Cultural diversity versus cultural distance

With Zhiling Wang and Peter Nijkamp This study analyses the impact of cultural composition on regional attractiveness from the perspective of international migrant sorting behavior on a European regional NUTS1 level. We use an attitudinal survey to quantify cultural distances between natives and immigrants in the region concerned, and estimate the migrants’ varying preferences for both cultural diversity and cultural distance. To account for regional unobserved heterogeneity, our econometric analysis employs artificial instrumental variables, as developed by Bayer et al.

Stedelijke voorzieningen en bevolking: wie woont waar en waarom?

Waarom zijn sommige steden aantrekkelijker dan andere steden? Eén van de belangrijke en boeiende onderzoeksvragen in de ruimtelijke economie betreft het verklaren waarom sommige steden aantrekkelijker zijn voor huishoudens en bedrijven dan andere. Als maatstaven voor aantrekkelijkheid worden vaak lonen en huizenprijzen genomen en deze verschillen inderdaad significant tussen gemeenten in Nederland. Zoals bijvoorbeeld de publicatie Stad en Land (De Groot e.a., 2010) al liet zien, kunnen de verschillen tussen grondprijzen in Nederland oplopen tot een factor 200 per vierkante meter kunnen jaarlonen verschillen tot 7 procent voor een zelfde soort baan.