How Important is Access to Jobs? Old Question - Improved Answer.

We study the impact of job proximity on individual employment and earnings. The analysis exploits a Swedish refugee dispersal policy to obtain exogenous variation in individual locations. Using very detailed data on the exact location of all residences and workplaces in Sweden, we find that having been placed in a location with poor job access in 1990-91 adversely affected employment in 1999. Doubling the number of jobs in the initial location in 1990-91 is associated with 2.9 percentage points higher employment probability in 1999. Considering that the 1999 employment rate was 43 percent among the refugees, this is a considerable effect. The analysis suggests that residential sorting leads to underestimation of the impact of job access.Job access, endogenous location, natural experiment

In Los Angeles, increasing neighborhood diversity means that segregation is on the decline

The makeup of American communities is changing – some communities are becoming more diverse, whilst others are becoming more segregated. In new research, William A.V. Clark, Eva Andersson, John Osth and Bo Malmberg examine trends in neighborhood diversity in Los Angeles since 2000. They find that only one third of people now live in strongly segregated neighborhoods, down from 40 percent in 2010, and that this increasing diversity has mainly been driven by the decline of homogenous white and black neighborhoods

Assessing Theoretical Conclusions With Blinded Inference to Investigate a Potential Inference Crisis

Scientific advances across a range of disciplines hinge on the ability to make inferences about unobservable theoretical entities on the basis of empirical data patterns. Accurate inferences rely on both discovering valid, replicable data patterns and accurately interpreting those patterns in terms of their implications for theoretical constructs. The replication crisis in science has led to widespread efforts to improve the reliability of research findings, but comparatively little attention has been devoted to the validity of inferences based on those findings. Using an example from cognitive psychology, we demonstrate a blinded-inference paradigm for assessing the quality of theoretical inferences from data. Our results reveal substantial variability in experts’ judgments on the very same data, hinting at a possible inference crisis

The globalisation of marriage fields : the Swedish case

Marriage fields - the geographical areas where people meet to partner traditionally tend to be relatively small and local. Increasing international travel and the use of the internet have broadened the geographical opportunity structure of potential partners. This increases the chances of meeting a partner from abroad, possibly resulting in a rise in international marriage migration. This paper uses unique longitudinal population data for the whole of Sweden to explore the globalisation of Swedish marriage fields. The results show an increase of 'marriage migrants' in Sweden between 1990 and 2004, although absolute numbers remain relatively low. The paper yields two new insights not previously recorded in the literature. First, we found a substantial proportion of all marriage migrants in Sweden to be males, while most existing literature on marriage migration focuses almost exclusively on females. Second, the pattern of geographical origins of marriage migrants is highly gendered, with male and female marriage migrants in Sweden originating from different regions in the world. This suggests that different mechanisms underlie male and female marriage migration.PostprintPeer reviewe

Novel Methods for the Estimation of Cost-Distance Decay in Potential Accessibility Models

In much accessibility research, arbitrary estimates of the distance-sensitivity parameters have been used to represent the distance decay-parameters in potential accessibility models. These estimates might be considered arbitrary, since the choice of value and the choice of the distance-decay function is often motivated by statistical indicators of the goodness-of-fit on spatial flows, given the fact that measures on \u2018real\u2019 accessibilities are missing. Starting from these considerations, in this chapter we introduce a new approach, the half-life model, originating from the natural sciences, to estimate distance-decay parameters. This method is compared with the conventional approaches \u2013 originating from spatial economic science \u2013 for the computation of distance-decay parameters, which concerns the calibration of both the unconstrained and the doubly-constrained spatial interaction model. The emerging distance-decay parameters will be then considered in the construction of the accessibility indicators based on the potential accessibility introduced by Hansen in 1959. In this context, both the mean and the median distance will be taken into account in order to identify MAUP-related issues. The exploration of these three approaches focuses on empirical analyses of accessibility in Sweden, at the municipal level, for the years 1993 and 2008. All the emerging accessibility indicators are compared in order to analyse similarities and differences in the hierarchical accessibility levels of the Swedish municipalities. The chapter concludes with some methodological/empirical remarks on the adoption of these three approaches, in the light of possible forecasts and related policy analyses

Ethnic segregation and performance inequality in the Swedish school system : a regional perspective

Sweden is today an immigrant country with more than 14% foreign born. An increasing share of the immigrants comes from non-European countries. This implies that Sweden has been transformed from an ethnically homogenous country into a country with a large visible minority. In this paper we survey the effect of this change on school segregation. Building on Schelling's model for residential segregation, we argue that establishment of a visible minority has triggered a process of school segregation that in some respects can be compared with the developments in the United States. In order to test the validity of a Schelling-type process in Swedish schools we compare segregation levels in regions with different shares of visible minority students. We use data from the PISA 2003 survey in combination with register data on the ethnic composition of student population in different parts of Sweden. We find that school segregation is higher in regions with a large visible-minority population. We also find that, controlling for student background, there are smaller differences in performance across schools in regions with low shares of minority students.authorCount :3</p

Cyclists as Intelligent Carriers of Space-Time Environmental Information:Crowd-Sourced Sensor Data for Local Air Quality Measurement and Mobility Analysis in the Netherlands

In recent years, slow travel modes (walking, cycling) have gained much interest in the context of urban air quality management. This article presents the findings from a novel air quality measurement experiment in the Netherlands, by regarding cyclists as carriers and transmitters of real-world information on fine-grained air quality conditions. Using individual sensors on bicycles—connected to a GPS positioning system—online local pollution information originating from cyclists’ detailed spatial mobility patterns is obtained. Such air quality surface maps and cyclists’ mobility maps are then used to identify whether there are significant differences between the actual route choice and the cyclists’ shortest route choice, so as to identify the implications of poor air quality conditions for their mobility choices. Thus, the article seeks to present both a detailed pollution surface map and the complex space-time mobility patterns of cyclists in a region, on the basis of online quantitative data—at any point in time and space—from bicycle users in a given locality. In addition, the article estimates their response—in terms of route choice—to detailed air-quality information through the use of a novel geoscience-inspired analysis of space-time “big data.” The empirical test of our quantitative modeling approach was carried out for the Greater Utrecht area in the Netherlands. Our findings confirm that spatial concentration of air pollutants have great consequences for bike users’ route choice patterns, especially in the case of non-commuting trips. We also find that cyclists make longer trips on weekends and in the evenings, especially towards parks and natural amenities.</p