The future demand for industrial sites in the Netherlands: is employment a good predictor?

16 oktober 2013
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The future demand for industrial sites in the Netherlands: is employment a good predictor, Regional Studies. Popular forecasting models for long-term planning of industrial sites assume a strong linear relationship between employment and land use. New Dutch panel data for 1997–2008 were used to test this assumption. In a linear model, employment alone does not suffice to predict land use. Non-linear models show a relationship at municipal and industrial sites level, but not for regions. However, the relationship is strongly biased by unobserved heterogeneity. For planning purposes and prediction, additional explanatory variables are necessary to tackle this problem. The findings do not support the use of simple linear models for the planning of industrial sites.