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

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

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.