The regionalization of labour markets by modelling commuting behaviour

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).

Integrated simulation for (sustainable) building design : state-of-the-art illustration

Many buildings are still constructed or remodelled without consideration of energy conserving strategies or other sustainability aspects. To provide substantial improvements in energy consumption and comfort levels, there is a need to treat buildings as complete optimised entities not as the sum of a number of separately optimised components

Building systems and indoor environment : simulation for design decision support

This paper outlines the state-of-the-art in integrated building simulation for design support. The ESP-r system is used as an example where integrated simulation is a core philosophy behind the development. The paper finishes with indicating a number of barriers, which hinder routine application of simulation for building design

Application of new measurement techniques and strategies to measure ammonia emissions from agricultural activities

Agriculture is the main contributor to the ammonia emissions in the Netherlands. In order to comply with the ammonia emission reduction assigned to the Netherlands, new techniques have been implemented to reduce the ammonia emissions from animal houses, and after application of slurry into the field

No hay diferencias en la diversidad genética entre arbustos de Cotoneaster franchetii (Rosaceae) de rangos nativos y no nativos

La diversidad genética de los arbustos de Cotoneaster franchetii es similar entre los rangos de distribución nativo y no nativo. Debido al efecto fundador comúnmente se asume que las plantas tienen mayor diversidad genética en su rango nativo que en las áreas donde fueron introducidos. Sin embargo, pocos estudios han probado este supuesto incluyendo la comparación entre los rangos nativos y no nativos. Nosotros analizamos marcadores de AFLP en 149 individuos de Cotoneaster franchetii pertenecientes a cinco poblaciones nativas (China) y cinco no nativas (Argentina) donde este arbusto invade exitosamente diferentes ambientes, y forma rodales extensos y monoespecíficos. Además comparamos los estimadores de diversidad genética y evaluamos la diferenciación genética entre las poblaciones examinando los valores de Fst y realizando un ACoP, un AMOVA y una prueba de Mantel. No se encontró evidencia de diversidad genética reducida en las poblaciones no nativas, mientras que el ACoP reveló dos grupos distintos, reflejando sus orígenes argentinos y chinos. Diez individuos de dos de las poblaciones chinas fueron la excepción, debido a que se agruparon dentro de las poblaciones argentinas, apoyando la idea de introducciones múltiples desde China hacia Argentina.It is commonly assumed that plants have more genetic diversity in their native range than in areas where they have been introduced due to founder effects. However, few studies have proven this assumption and included the comparison between non-native and native ranges. We analyzed AFLP fingerprint patterns of 149 individuals from five native (China) and five non-native (Argentina) populations of Cotoneaster franchetii, a shrub which successfully invades different habitats and forms extensive monospecific stands. We compared genetic diversity estimates and assessed genetic differentiation among populations by inspecting FST values and conducting a PCoA, an AMOVA and a Mantel test. No evidence was found for reduced genetic diversity in non-native populations while the PCoA revealed two distinct groups, reflecting their Chinese and Argentine origin. The exceptions were ten individuals from two Chinese populations that clustered within the Argentine populations, supporting the idea of multiple introductions from China to Argentina.Fil: Lett, Irene. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Centro de Ecología y Recursos Naturales Renovables; ArgentinaFil: Hensen, Isabell. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Institute of Biology/Geobotany and Botanical Garden; Alemania. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig; AlemaniaFil: Hirsh, Heidi. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Institute of Biology/Geobotany and Botanical Garden; Alemania. Stellenbosch University, Centre for Invasion Biology, Department of Botany and Zoology; SudáfricaFil: Renison, Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas y Tecnológicas. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas y Tecnológicas; Argentin

The Delimitation and Coherence of Functional and Administrative Regions

The aim of this paper is to examine the coherence between and within functional as well as administrative regions in a labour market context. The larger the coherence of the local labour markets within the delimited regions, the larger the heterogeneity between the delimited regions is expected to be for particular measures related to the economy and the labour market. Contrary to previous delimitation studies we test for labour market coherence. The functionally defined regions are compared with the administratively defined regions with respect to four economic indicators: (i) income level; (ii) housing prices; (iii) employment rate, and (iv) unemployment rate. It turns out that the administrative delimitation of the Netherlands performs, on average, equally well as the functional delimitation. The hypothesis that the municipalities within the administratively defined regions show less coherence than the municipalities within the functionally delimited regions, cannot be rejected. We find some minor evidence that the coherence is greater for the average income level of municipalities within functional regions than within administrative regions. It can be concluded that there is not much to be gained in labour market policies by using functional instead of administrative divisions of regional labour markets. Therefore we doubt the usefulness of other studies on functional delimitations of labour market regions. Finally, our results imply that it may be better for regional labour market policies not to use a highly differentiated division of regions for such a small country as the Netherlands.education, training and the labour market;

1. Wochenbericht SO206

Expedition SO-206 mit FS SONNE Wochenbericht Nr. 1 ( 31.05.-06.06.2010