Social inequalities in travel behaviour: trip distances in the context of residential self-selection and lifestyles

In recent years, the framework of ‘classical’ objective determinants of travel behaviour – such as transport systems, generalised travel costs, life situation and the built environment – has begun to make way for the introduction of subjective elements including attitudes, lifestyles, and location preferences. This paper presents findings from an empirical study of trip distances travelled for three purposes (work, maintenance, leisure). The study was conducted in the region of Cologne, and the analysis is based on structural equation modelling. The results indicate that, in general, neither lifestyles nor location preferences have a strong impact on trip distances, except for leisure activities: here lifestyle has the strongest impact of all variables studied. Maintenance trip distances are significantly affected by the spatial setting in which people live, indicating the relevance of the built environment for this travel segment.     

Extracting cover sets from free fuzzy sorting data

Assignment of items to multiple categories requires suitable statistical methods. The present paper provides a new approach to solve this task. The concept of fuzzy sets is extended to cover sets (sets of overlapping clusters) in a simple manner introducing a vector of item membership sums. The application of the new concept is exemplified by modifying the fuzzy cluster analysis algorithm of Kaufman and Rousseeuw (Finding groups in data: an introduction to cluster analysis, 1990) to cover set cluster analysis appropriately. Wide equivalence of the numerical problems is demonstrated from Lagrange multipliers and Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions. Additionally, some extensions are introduced to the algorithm to improve its behavior for suboptimal large or small numbers of clusters. The adapted algorithm in most cases reproduces single sortings for correct numbers of clusters. Two applications to empirical free fuzzy sorting data sets are provided. Limitations of the algorithm are discussed.     

Airport competition - Regional airports losing ground to main airports

Regional airports in Norway are losing market shares to nearby main airports on flights to the national capital, Oslo, and on international travel via Oslo. Travellers are willing to spend several hours extra driving to a larger airport in order to take advantage of lower fares and more convenient airline services. Traffic leakage from regional airports is high when the service from the regional airport is indirect and fare differences are large. Public service obligation tenders (PSO) set maximum fares on the regional legs, but do not cover through travel from regional airports which involve commercial legs. Traffic leakage is particularly evident in the leisure segment. Leakage levels tend to increase as competition is intensified at main airports, but the evidence is rather mixed. Logistic curves of airport market shares have proven to be useful when comparing spatial variations in leakage levels.     

Same Same But Different: Dialects and Trade

Language is a strong and robust determinant of international trade patterns: Countries sharing a common language trade significantly more with each other than countries using different languages, holding other factors constant. In this article we present the first analysis of the effect of language on trade in an intra‐national context. Analyzing unique data for a single‐language country, Germany, we find that similarities in the local dialect have a significantly positive impact on regional trade. We interpret this finding as evidence for the trade‐promoting effect of culture, because linguistic similarities likely reflect cultural ties across regions, rather than lower costs of communication or similar institutions.     

Firm size and job creation in Germany

This paper reports new results on the role of firms from various size classes in the job generation process in Germany. It is based on a unique longitudinal data set covering all manufacturing establishments that existed in at least one year between 1978 and 1993 in the German federal state Lower Saxony. We find that gross job creation and destruction rates tend to decline with firm size, while net job creation rates and firm size are not systematically related when firms are classified according to their average number of employees in the base and end year. Small firms create (destroy) quite a large share of all new (lost) jobs.     

Subsidiarity in the European Union

Against the backdrop of the highly controversial debate on the future competences of the different European institutions, the principle of subsidiarity, a fundamental principle of European Union law, has recently met with renewed interest. The contributions to this Forum discuss a number of pertinent issues.

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*A longer version of this article is to be found in H. Tomann (ed.): Die Rolle der europ?ischen Institutionen in der Wirtschaftspolitik, Baden-Baden 2006, Nomos, pp. 59-76.     

Higher wages in exporting firms: self-selection, export effect, or both? First evidence from linked employer-employee data

While it is a stylized fact that exporting firms pay higher wages than non-exporting firms, the direction of the link between exporting and wages is less clear. Using a rich set of German linked employer-employee panel data we follow over time plants that start to export. We show that the exporter wage premium does already exist in the years before firms start to export, and that it does not increase in the following years. Higher wages in exporting firms are thus due to self-selection of more productive, better paying firms into export markets; they are not caused by export activities.     

A dynamic spatial panel data approach to the German wage curve

A wage curve is a decreasing function of wages on the regional unemployment rate. Most empirical studies on the wage curve ignore possible spatial interaction effects between the regions which are the primary units of research. This paper reconsiders the western German wage curve with a special focus on the geography of labour markets. Spillovers between regions are taken into account. The paper tests whether the unemployment rate in the larger surrounding region also affects wages. In addition, agglomeration effects and effects of local monopsony are assessed.The main database is a random sample of 974,179 employees observed over the period 1980-2004 and covering 326 NUTS3 units (districts). This rich data set is used to estimate a dynamic wage curve according to the two-step approach of Bell et al. (2002). In the first step one controls for individual heterogeneity and in the second step one allows for spatial effects of unemployment across regions on wages. We check the sensitivity of this wage elasticity to various spatial weight matrices as well as allowing for the endogeneity of unemployment. We also estimate the wage elasticity for various population groups.     

Capital Structure and Labour Demand: Investigations Using German Micro Data

The paper analyses the interaction between capital structure and employment decisions of firms. For this purpose, a theoretical model is developed in which a firm determines employment along an optimal path taking into account financial considerations. The empirical analysis using West German micro data proves that a negative relationship exists between employment and the debt asset ratio of the firm. We also demonstrate that as real wages (sales) increase, employment decreases (increases).