PolicyDesign

TUPD-2023-009

TITLE Regional dependencies and local spillovers: Insights from commuter flows
AUTHORS Melanie Krause

Professor, Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences , Leipzig University, Germany

Sebastian Kripfganz

Senior Lecturer (advanced assistant professor) in Econometrics, University of Exeter Business School, Exeter, United Kingdom
Visiting Associate Professor, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University

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ABSTRUCT

A region’s growth trajectory is influenced by the economic circumstances of other regions in its proximity. While proximity is often understood in a geographic sense, we consider commuting as a channel for cross-regional economic dependencies. In contrast to geographic measures, commuter flows are inherently asymmetric and heterogeneous. Estimating a time-space dynamic panel model with German county-level data, we demonstrate a considerable variation in the distribution of shock responses, which is hidden by the traditional focus on average marginal effects. We advocate for a more in-depth analysis of the spatial-effects distribution and highlight that local spatial multipliers differ depending on the nature of the shock and the assumed network structure.

KEYWORDS Commuting, Shock Propagation, Spatial Multiplier, Spatial Weight Matrix
ISSUED June 2023

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