Daniela Arlia (p)

Davide Lunardon

Using a large listing dataset, I empirically show that the housing prices and rents evolved differently across and within sub-markets over nationwide housing cycles in Germany, providing evidence of the segmentation of the housing markets. In particular, I show two relevant empirical facts: 1) the price-to-rent ratio is highly heterogeneous across cities; 2) the return differentials between different housing quality tiers are lower in big cities compared to the rest of the country. The first fact contradicts the standard economic theory for which rental values should reflect the discounted prices. The second fact shows that shifts in the housing price distributions are not always homothetic. In order to explain these facts, I build up on the assignment model framework in which housing is segmented by various quality tiers and demand-driven shocks could generate spillovers both up and down, depending on the demand composition and the supply constraints of the local housing market. Combining the housing data with administrative panel data for the labor market, I exploit the cross-sectional variation in the exposure to technological change to build a quasi-experimental design for studying how demand-driven shocks affecting the local occupational structure induce changes in the prices of both high-end and low-end housings. I finally discuss the implications for the welfare conditions of different types of workers across and within locations.

Aygun Kam (p), Zbigniew Przygodzki, Justyna Trippner-Hrabi

Daniela Arlia

The information society's prospects for information technology have expanded business life's flexibility, making the working environment moveable from traditional offices to outside workplaces. Many public institutions have shown a strong preference for remote work, and it has become necessary as a result of COVID-19's effects. Therefore, the aim of the research is the identification of whether and under what conditions remote work is effective in terms of management processes in social services and administrative services that are public utility sector organizations. From this point of view, the study was carried out on 165 department leaders in social services and administrative services in Poland. 139 department leaders work in social services, and 26 department leaders work in administrative services. As result, It is found that the capacity to work in a team has a favourable and remarkable effect on accomplishing institutional goals in both services. Furthermore, it turns out that both services' organizational structures are flat and adaptable when employees work remotely. The performance level of accomplishing the objectives of public institutions through remote work is often low, regardless of the type of utility services. This conclusion shows that the integration of remote work with utility services has not been successful. In this regard, it is clear that they must improve their methods and procedures if they are to get better outcomes when working remotely.

Artemis Tsiopa (p), Geoffrey Caruso

Aygun Kam

Daily mobility flows, in particular commuting, have major social and environmental impacts. Understanding those flows is essential for urban and transportation planning. The acceptance of teleworking in the past few years has changed the way distance is perceived, allowing commuters to seek residential advantages in greater distances from their job places. In border regions, where income and social benefits differentials across countries add to the distance trade-off, these changes may well trigger even more substantial changes in commuting patterns. Given the current lack of robust post-COVID data, we suggest to explore internal and cross-border mobility patterns before the pandemic. More precisely, this paper studies the mobility patterns of all commuters residing in France and compares those working within the country and across the border. The aim of the paper is to quantify both the repelling effect of distance and identify whether it is of the same magnitude across borders. We also aim to discover spatial heterogeneity, with varying roles of the different borders of France (with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Switzerland). To that end, we first estimate spatial interaction models (unconstrained and doubly constrained models) for France as a whole to retrieve the general effect of distance then include border dummies and interactions. We also analyse residuals to identify border's permeability. We highlight and discuss preliminary results.

Davide Lunardon (p)

Artemis Tsiopa

The paper contributes to the broad literature on agglomeration economies by focusing on an under investigated aspect: job quality. Three mechanisms can affect the urban/rural differential in job quality: urban rat race, matching between demand and supply of labour and job quality externalities. In this work, job quality is looked at in a multifaced way, by considering the following relevant traits: intensity at work; having career opportunities; autonomy at work; meaningfulness at work and job satisfaction. In addition to the main analysis, the moderating role of self-employment and working from home will also be empirically tested. The data are at the individual-level and are gathered from the European Working Condition Survey 2015.
Preliminary results show that after controlling for individual, firm, occupation, industry and country-specific characteristics, working in urban areas is more intense than in rural. At the same time, urban workers reported lower autonomy and meaningfulness at work and job satisfaction. No statistical difference is found for having career opportunities.
The preliminary results seem to corroborate that the detrimental mechanism associated to the urban rat race prevail on the others spatial determinants. This contribution has interesting echoes for the economic geography literature since it sheds light on an under-investigated aspect concerning labour and with relevant implication for the localization of firms.