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This paper discusses various aspects of the economic analysis of commuting behavior. It starts with a review of two difficulties associated with urban economics models: the empirically falsified prediction of the relation between commuting time and income, and the presence of substantial excess commuting. Notwithstanding these anomalies, research that focuses directly on the value of travel time provides evidence that there is substantial resistance against commuting among large groups of workers. However, commuting costs are just one among many other explanatory variables for actual commuting behavior, and commuting itself has become much less onerous over time. This suggests that commuting costs play a much more limited role than has been assumed in the past. On the other hand, empirical evidence suggests that space is more important than one would be inclined to think on the basis of the considerations just given. These empirical regularities suggest that other space-related aspects of the functioning of urban labor and housing markets are more important than was previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become an important tool to promote a variety of public goals and policies. In the past years much attention has been given to the expected social benefits from deploying ICTs in different urban fields (transportation, education, public participation in planning, etc.) and to its potential to mitigate various current or emerging urban problems. The growing importance of ICTs in daily life, business activities, and governance prompts the need to consider ICTs more explicitly in urban policies. Alongside the expectation that the private sector will play a major role in the ICT field, the expected benefits from ICTs also encourage urban authorities to formulate proper public ICT policies. Against this background, various intriguing research questions arise. What are the urban policy-makers' expectations about ICTs? And how do they assess the future implications of ICTs for their city? A thorough analysis of these questions will provide a better understanding of the extent to which urban authorities are willing to invest in and to adopt a dedicated ICT policy. This study is focusing on the way urban decision-makers perceive the opportunities of ICT policy. After a sketch of recent development and policy issues, a conceptual model is developed to map out the driving forces of urban ICT policies in cities in Europe. Next, by highlighting the importance of understanding the decision-maker's ‘black box’ three crucial variables are identified within this box. In the remaining part of the paper these three variables will be operationalized by using a large survey comprising more than 200 European cities. By means of statistical multivariate methods (i.e., factor and cluster analysis), the decision-makers were able to be characterized according to the way they perceive their city (the concept of ‘imaginable city’), their opinion about ICT, and the way they assess the relevance of ICT policies to their city. Next, a solid explanatory, framework will be offered by using a log-linear legit analysis to test the relationships between these three aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces articles in the June 2002 issue of the 'Growth and Change' journal. Importance of state and federal programs for growing high-technology start-up companies; Investigation on public assistance porgrams for small-scale entrepreneurship in institutions in Israel; Importance of education in self-employment success.

Ethnic entrepreneurship has become a popular concept in a modern multi-cultural society in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This paper seeks to offer an overview of the potential of ethnic entrepreneurship for solving inter alia the structural unemployment problems of ethnic groups in cities. There is a general lack of empirical evidence on this issue in the current literature. The present paper aims to fill this gap by addressing in particular the critical success conditions for ethnic entrepreneurs. The focus of the research is on variations in success across three ethnic groups in the Amsterdam area. By means of structured personal interviews with many ethnic entrepreneurs, a systematic qualitative data base was created. The paper sets out to identify empirically the driving forces for business success, such as education or the role of informal networks. The explanatory framework deployed for the identification of these qualitative success factors for distinct ethnic groups is based on a particular, recently developed artificial intelligence method, viz. rough set analysis. This multidimensional classification approach appears to be able to identify various important factors for the motivation and performance of ethnic enterprises. Two major findings emerge from this investigation: (i) performance conditions vary across ethnic groups, and (ii) informal networks are crucial for business success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a workshop aimed to encourage a research program on regional endogenous growth policy, held in February 1999 at the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Theme of the symposium; Summary of the papers presented at the symposium.

Reports on a study about the center of spatial economic analysis, with a view on travel speed in transport behavior. Time and human behavior; Overview on time pioneering behavior; Emperics on heterogeneity in travel behavior; Time pioneers in an empirical context; Characteristics of vehicle convenience.

Focuses on cyclical and regional variations in vacancy dynamics in Dutch labor markets with persistent imbalances between demand and supply. Developments in Dutch regional labor markets from 1980 to 1993; Regional variations in vacancy dynamics; Shift-share analysis of average vacancy duration from 1989 to 1993; Investigation of the differences in the effectiveness to match demand and supply on the labor market across regions; Conclusions.

Unemployment rates appear to vary widely at a subregional (e.g., local or provincial) level. Using spatial econometric models for spatial autocorrelation, this paper focuses attention on the spatial structure of regional unemployment disparities of Italian provinces. On the basis of findings from the economic literature and of the available socio-economic data, various model specifications, including different explanatory variables, are tested to investigate the geographical distribution of unemployment in the 103 provinces of Italy for the years 1998 and 2003. The results suggest that there is a clear explanation of unemployment differentials in terms of spatial equilibrium and disequilibrium factors and a significant degree of spatial dependence among labour markets at the provincial level in Italy. Provinces marked by high unemployment, as well as those characterised by low unemployment, tend to be spatially clustered, demonstrating the presence of unemployment “persistency” in space and time regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The potential interactions among governmental policies, investments and economic growth are complex and manifold. This paper will perform a systematic comparative analysis of the various economic insights that are currently available on these complex relationships, both theoretically (by a selective literature review) and empirically (by reviewing the empirically obtained insights). Despite the wide variety of potential theoretical relationships between government expenditures, taxation and growth, most empirical analyses are restricted to simple linear regressions of growth on some measure of government expenditures. We will indicate directions for future empirical research that may enrich our knowledge about the complex relationship between fiscal policies and economic growth, not only nationally but also regionally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs vector autoregressive ( VAR) models to measure the impact of monetary policy shocks on regional output in Indonesia. We find substantial cross-regional variation in policy responses in terms of both magnitude as well as timing. Our work adds to the existing literature by providing insights from a large developing country, viz. Indonesia, where monetary policy has both a national and a regional dimension. The results support previous findings that the differential regional effects of monetary policy are significantly related to sectoral composition (especially the share of manufacturing), providing evidence for the relevance of the interest rate channel of monetary policy. We also find that firm size contributes to these differences, providing evidence for the importance of the credit channel. As a whole, both types of channels appear to operate simultaneously in the decentralized Indonesian monetary policy and to impact on the real part of the regional economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]