IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/hwwadp/26147.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Spatial dependence of regional unemployment in the European Union

Author

Listed:
  • Niebuhr, Annekatrin

Abstract

The findings of recent studies on adjustment processes suggest that regional labour markets in the EU and the US differ significantly. Low wage flexibility and limited labour mobility in European countries involve persistent unemployment differentials across regions. However, the spatial dimension of regional labour market problems is largely neglected in the corresponding analyses. In contrast, the present paper focuses on the spatial structure of regional unemployment disparities. Regions are tightly linked by migration, commuting and interregional trade. These types of spatial interaction are exposed to frictional effects of distance, possibly causing spatial dependence of regional labour market conditions. Spatial association of regional unemployment is analysed for a sample of European countries between 1986 and 1998 by measures of spatial autocorrelation and spatial econometric methods. The results point to a significant spatial dependence among regional labour markets in Europe. Regions marked by high unemployment as well as areas characterised by low unemployment tend to cluster in space. The findings suggest that different forms of spatial interaction with varying scope affect the evolution of regional unemployment in Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • Niebuhr, Annekatrin, 2002. "Spatial dependence of regional unemployment in the European Union," HWWA Discussion Papers 186, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:hwwadp:26147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/19173/1/186.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Florax, Raymond & Folmer, Henk, 1992. "Specification and estimation of spatial linear regression models : Monte Carlo evaluation of pre-test estimators," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 405-432, September.
    2. Maurice Obstfeld & Giovanni Peri, 1998. "Regional non-adjustment and fiscal policy," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 13(26), pages 206-259.
    3. F Stetzer, 1982. "Specifying Weights in Spatial Forecasting Models: The Results of Some Experiments," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 14(5), pages 571-584, May.
    4. Burgess, Simon & Profit, Stefan, 2001. "Externalities in the matching of workers and firms in ritain," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 313-333, June.
    5. repec:bla:kyklos:v:50:y:1997:i:2:p:221-45 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Burda, Michael C. & Profit, Stefan, 1996. "Matching across space: Evidence on mobility in the Czech Republic," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 255-278, October.
    7. Obstfeld, Maurice & Peri, Giovanni, 1998. "Regional Nonadjustment and Fiscal Policy: Lessons for EMU," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers 233615, University of California-Berkeley, Department of Economics.
    8. Luc Anselin & Raymond J. G. M. Florax, 1995. "New Directions in Spatial Econometrics: Introduction," Advances in Spatial Science, in: Luc Anselin & Raymond J. G. M. Florax (ed.), New Directions in Spatial Econometrics, chapter 1, pages 3-18, Springer.
    9. Faini, Riccardo & Galli, Giampaolo & Gennari, Pietro & Rossi, Fulvio, 1997. "An empirical puzzle: Falling migration and growing unemployment differentials among Italian regions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 571-579, April.
    10. Jim Taylor & Steve Bradley, 1997. "Unemployment in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Regional Disparities in Germany, Italy and the UK," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 221-245, May.
    11. McCormick, Barry, 1997. "Regional unemployment and labour mobility in the UK," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 581-589, April.
    12. Elhorst, J. Paul, 2000. "The Mystery Of Regional Unemployment Differentialsa Survey Of Theoretical And Empirical Explanations," ERSA conference papers ersa00p60, European Regional Science Association.
    13. Henry G. Overman & Diego Puga, 2002. "Unemployment clusters across Europe's regions and countries [‘Regional evolutions’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 17(34), pages 115-148.
    14. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Lawrence F. Katz, 1992. "Regional Evolutions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(1), pages 1-76.
    15. Straubhaar, Thomas, 2000. "Why do we need a general agreement on movements of people (GAMP)?," HWWA Discussion Papers 94, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA).
    16. McCallum, John, 1995. "National Borders Matter: Canada-U.S. Regional Trade Patterns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 615-623, June.
    17. Burridge, Peter & Gordon, Ian Richard, 1981. "Unemployment in the British Metropolitan Labour Areas," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 33(2), pages 274-297, July.
    18. Giuseppe Bertola, 2000. "Labour markets in the European Union : the European unemployment problem," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 1(01), pages 9-11, October.
    19. Mr. Antonio Spilimbergo & Mr. Eswar S Prasad & Mr. Paolo Mauro, 1999. "Perspectives on Regional Unemployment in Europe," IMF Occasional Papers 1999/004, International Monetary Fund.
    20. Manning, Neil, 1994. "Earnings, Unemployment and Contiguity: Evidence from British Counties 1976-1992," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 41(1), pages 43-68, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hans-Friedrich Eckey & Reinhold Kosfeld & Matthias Türck, 2007. "Regional Convergence in Germany: a Geographically Weighted Regression Approach," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 45-64.
    2. Floro Ernesto Caroleo & Gianluigi Coppola, 2005. "The Impact of the Institutions on Regional Unemployment Disparities," CELPE Discussion Papers 98, CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy.
    3. Floro Ernesto Caroleo & Gianluigi Coppola, 2006. "Le cause dei divari regionali della disoccupazione in Europa," RIVISTA DI ECONOMIA E STATISTICA DEL TERRITORIO, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2006(1).
    4. William Mitchell, 2014. "Spatial econometric modelling," Chapters, in: Robert Stimson (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Spatially Integrated Social Science, chapter 17, pages 345-377, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Brijesh C. Purohit, 2015. "Health Policy, Inequity and Convergence in India," Working Papers id:7155, eSocialSciences.
    6. Roberto Basile & Luca De Benedictis, 2004. "Regional Unemployment and Productivity in Europe and the US," ERSA conference papers ersa04p38, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Brijesh C. Purohit, 2012. "Health Policy, Inequity and Convergence in India," Working Papers 2012-074, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    8. Floro Ernesto Caroleo & Gianluigi Coppola, 2006. "The Impact of the Institutions on Regional Unemployment Disparities in Europe," Discussion Papers 4_2006, D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.
    9. Eckey Hans-Friedrich & Kosfeld Reinhold & Türck Matthias, 2005. "Intra- und internationale Spillover-Effekte zwischen den EU-Regionen / Intra- and International Spillovers Across EU Regions," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 225(6), pages 600-621, December.
    10. Roberto Basile & Luca De Benedictis, 2008. "Regional unemployment and productivity in Europe," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(2), pages 173-192, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michel Blanc & François Hild, 2008. "Analyse des marchés locaux du travail : du chômage à l'emploi," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 415(1), pages 45-60.
    2. Enrique López-Bazo & Tomás del Barrio & Manuel Artis, 2002. "The regional distribution of Spanish unemployment: A spatial analysis," Papers in Regional Science, Springer;Regional Science Association International, vol. 81(3), pages 365-389.
    3. Maria Francesca Cracolici & Miranda Cuffaro & Peter Nijkamp, 2007. "Geographical Distribution of Unemployment: An Analysis of Provincial Differences in Italy," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 649-670, December.
    4. Sarantis LOLOS & Evangelia PAPAPETROU, 2012. "Unemployment disparities and persistence Assessing the evidence from Greek regions, 1981-2008," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 12(1), pages 69-90.
    5. Bande, Roberto & Fernández, Melchor & Montuenga, Víctor, 2008. "Regional unemployment in Spain: Disparities, business cycle and wage setting," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 885-914, October.
    6. Enrique Lopez-Bazo & Tomas Del Barrio & Manuel Artis, 2005. "Geographical distribution of unemployment in Spain," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 305-318.
    7. Vicente Rios Ibañez, 2014. "What drives regional unemployment convergence?," ERSA conference papers ersa14p924, European Regional Science Association.
    8. Tani, Massimiliano, 2003. "Have Europeans become more mobile? A note on regional evolutions in the EU: 1988-1997," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 23-30, July.
    9. Inmaculada Garcia-Mainar & Victor Montuenga-Gomez, 2003. "The Spanish Wage Curve: 1994-1996," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(9), pages 929-945.
    10. Blackaby, David H. & Drinkwater, Stephen, 2004. "Migration and Labour Market Differences: The Case of Wales," IZA Discussion Papers 1275, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Walsh, Brendan M., 2006. "Labour Market Adjustment in the Irish Regions: 1988-2005," Quarterly Economic Commentary: Special Articles, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), vol. 2006(3-Autumn), pages 80-99.
    12. Bayer Christian & Jüßen Falko, 2007. "Convergence in West German Regional Unemployment Rates," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 8(4), pages 510-535, December.
    13. David C Maré & Wai Kin Choy, 2001. "Regional Labour Market Adjustment and the Movements of People: A Review," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/08, New Zealand Treasury.
    14. Robert Beyer & Michael Stemmer, 2015. "From progress to nightmare - European regional unemployment over time," DNB Working Papers 458, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    15. Michelle Gilmartin & Dimitris Korobilis, 2012. "On Regional Unemployment: An Empirical Examination of the Determinants of Geographical Differentials in the UK," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 59(2), pages 179-195, May.
    16. Jens Suedekum, 2005. "Increasing returns and spatial unemployment disparities," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 84(2), pages 159-181, June.
    17. Natalia PRESSMAN & Vadim KLEPFISH, 2008. "Regional Unemployment Rate Convergence in Israel," EcoMod2008 23800110, EcoMod.
    18. Halleck Vega, Solmaria & Elhorst, J. Paul, 2016. "A regional unemployment model simultaneously accounting for serial dynamics, spatial dependence and common factors," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 85-95.
    19. Sari Pekkala & Hannu Tervo, 2002. "Unemployment and Migration: Does Moving Help?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 104(4), pages 621-639, December.
    20. Adalgiso Amendola & Floro Ernesto Caroleo & Gianluigi Coppola, 2003. "Regional differences in the European labour market," ERSA conference papers ersa03p200, European Regional Science Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Regional unemployment; Spatial interaction; Spatial econometrics; Europe;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:hwwadp:26147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hwwaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.