Evgenia Anastasiou (p), Mari Noelle Duquenne , Sophoclis Dritsas

Τhe expansion of urban space both on a conceptual and spatial level takes place in Greece over the last decades. The modern suburban areas embrace new urban values, respond to issues of nature, locality and quality of life and coexist with the timelessness of agricultural activity. Consequently, movements towards the periurban area conceal a form of upward social mobility.
The main purpose of this research is to identify the zones of the periurban areas in Greece, giving prominence to the internal migration of the resident population within the urban space, and specifically to flows between urban and periurban areas. The analysis concerns the 2001-2011 period since the official data on migration movements are provided by the population censuses (the next census will take place in 2021). The spatial reference level is the 1034 former Kapodistrian municipalities on the basis of which the urban and periurban areas have been delimited. Comparatively to the current administrative division (Kallikrati reform through which the number of municipalities has been reduced to 325), the former Kapodistrian municipalities allow to more precisely identify the internal migration (flows) between the urban and periurban areas.
Multivariate analysis techniques were applied in order to create a typology of the urban and the periurban space, taking into account the structure of urban complexes, the main geographical characteristics of the periurban municipalities as well as the first-degree proximity and their distance to the main urban center of the prefecture. The flows matrix was then created to measure the flows between the Greek urban and periurban areas and finally evaluate at a local level, the internal migration balance in order to detect the most attractive areas and determine the main factors of this attractiveness.

Hannah Illing (p)

This paper investigates cross-border commuting in the context of European integration. The opening of the German labor market in 2011 for workers from Central and Eastern Europe resulted in a significant increase of Czech cross-border commuters. Using German social-security data for 2007-2017, I estimate the effect of this worker inflow on native employment and wages. Combining a 2-step matching procedure with an event study analysis, I find negative effects on native wages and native full-time employment. Losses are particularly high for low-skilled and younger workers. In contrast, high-skilled workers gain from the labor supply shock.

Axel Watanabe (p)

There has been a long tradition of presumed perfect mobility in urban economic theories. Workers switch their locations in direct response to differences in local economic performance. Recent empirical observations prove otherwise. The number of movers declines with distance while there is a positive correlation between the moving distance and skill level. We build a general equilibrium model of a system of cities to explain the city-size distribution as a result of reduced mobility. Workers with a heterogeneous skill level have a corresponding distance-tolerance level and self-sort into select cities. The resulting size distribution reflects the trade-off between the moving distance and earning opportunities enhanced by agglomeration. Our predicted distribution closely traces the empirical distribution.

Tatiana Blinova (p), Svetlana Bylina , Victior Rusanovskiy

The main aim of this study is to explore the determinant factors of life expectancy at birth of the rural population in Russia and identify the gender differences. The database was created for 78 regions of Russia on the basis of statistical indicators presented of the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). We carry out a cross section regression analysis of the factors affecting the life expectancy at birth of the rural population. The results of our analysis show that the high rate of unemployment is a statistically significant factor negatively affecting the life expectancy of the rural population. We find a negative correlation between the share of the population with incomes below the subsistence minimum and the life expectancy. The results show that a high level of vocational education is a statistically significant factor positively affecting the life expectancy at birth of the rural population. The quality of housing is also an important factor of female life expectancy. Among the factors positively affecting the male life expectancy is the availability of timely and affordable medical care. Beside the environment, changes in the life expectancy are caused by personal and behavioral factors. Our study made it possible to identify statistically significant economic, social, demographic, ecological and behavioral factors that affect the life expectancy of the rural population in Russia. The results support our hypothesis. Selected statistically significant factors explain between 77.1 percent and 82.5 percent of differences in life expectancy at birth of rural population in Russia. The present study uses an innovative approach to identify factors responsible for male and female life expectancy at birth. All factors of life expectancy disaggregated on (1) environment, (2) personal and (3) behavioral factors. Our findings have significant policy implications for the rural development in Russia and can be applicable to other countries.
Acknowledgements: This research received support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project No 19-010-00229.