Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.
The hospitality industry is a rapidly growing revenue generator in many countries and is becoming economically important for generating employment and for integrating of immigrants into the labor market. As an industry where firms face fierce competition, it is important for the firms to maintain their competitiveness by distinguishing themselves from others through continuous improvements and innovations. In this article, we investigate the determinants of innovation in the hospitality industry by analyzing survey data gathered from over 900 firms in Sweden. In the analysis, we differentiate between firm-specific and location-specific features. We conclude that the most important characteristics that explain innovation lie within the firm itself, not the location. These results provide important insights regarding firm- versus location-placed innovation policies.
This paper aims to provide a brief review of the much neglected ‘dark side’ of social capital. To highlight the contextual nature of social capital by way of examples from different geographies, we draw attention to the potentially detrimental effects associated with the concept. A significant body of literature addresses the advantages of being connected to various types of social bridges and bonds. While emphasising the ‘bright side’ of social capital, that literature pays limited attention to the negative attributes of social ties and their potentially detrimental effects on a number of social and economic outcomes. Although it is not reasonable to establish a dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ social capital, it is possible to conceptualise such negative attributes in the light of the existing literature, in which the context-dependent nature of social capital is accentuated. We focus on two critical questions: (i) Why is it essential to address the contextual nature of social capital? (ii) How could geography come into play?
The opponents of big-box entry argue that large retail establishments generate a variety of negative externalities. The advocates, on the contrary, argue that access to a large retail market not only delivers direct economic benefits, but also a variety of positive spill-over effects, and therefore, can be considered a consumer amenity that increases the attractiveness of the entry location. To test the validity of these competing arguments, we use the entry of IKEA in Sweden as a quasi-experiment and investigate if increased access to retail is associated with place attractiveness, where attractiveness is proxied by residential property values. We find that entry by IKEA increases prices of the properties sold in the entry cities by, on average, 4.2% or 62,980 SEK (approximately 6,600 USD), but such an effect is statistically insignificant for the properties in the immediate vicinity of the new IKEA retail trade area. We also observe an attenuation of the effect with distance from the new IKEA store, where the properties located 10 km away experience a 2% price increase. Our results indicate that large retailers have the potential to increase place attractiveness, but perhaps not in the immediate vicinity of the new establishment.
This book approaches the tourism and hospitality industry from a regional science perspective. By analyzing the spatial context of tourist travels, the hospitality sector, and the regional impacts of tourist activities, it demonstrates the value of the regional science paradigm for understanding the dynamics and effects of tourism and hospitality-related phenomena. Written by leading regional science scholars from various countries as well as professionals from organizations such as OECD and AirBnB, the contributions address topics such as migration, new types of accommodation, segmentation of tourism demand, and the potential use of tracking technologies in tourism research.
The content is divided into five parts, the first of which analyzes spatial effects on the development of firms in the tourism industry, while the second approaches temporal and spatial variability in tourism through analytical regional science tools. The broader economic and social impacts of tourism are addressed in part three. Part four assesses specific tourism segments and tourist behaviors, while part five discusses environmental aspects and tourism destination policies. The book will appeal to scholars of regional and spatial science and tourism, as well as tourism specialists and policymakers interested in developing science and evidence-based tourism policies.
Empirical research frequently involves regression analysis with binary categorical variables, which are traditionally handled through dummy explanatory variables. This paper argues that separate category-wise models may provide a more logical and comprehensive tool for analysing data with binary categories. Exploring different aspects of both methods, we contrast the two with a Monte Carlo simulation and an empirical example to provide a practical insight.
Who works longer - and why? This paper investigates the characteristics of people that stay longer in the workforce, even beyond the time they are eligible to retire. In our regional analysis, we use an 11-year balanced panel of 290 Swedish regions. In the individual analysis, we use a large individual level panel to apply Cox proportional hazard estimates on 'risk' of entering retirement. Our results show a large gender difference: women tend to retire earlier than men. Between employees and entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs retire later. People in larger regions tend to retire later. Higher house prices, and the share of small firms in a region correlate with a lower likelihood of retirement. The local tax rate and the share of blue-collar workers in a region is significantly related to lower retirement age. A high average wage, commuting intensity, and high human capital in a region is associated with later retirement.
This paper examines the probability of finding a number retail services in Swedish municipalities with respect to theirmarket potential. In particular, the authors investigate how different degrees of market potential affects the presence ofcertain retail activities in central and non-central municipalities in Sweden. Using a probabilistic approach, the resultssuggest that, for both central and non-central municipalities, the probability of finding certain retail services dependsheavily on the market potential within the municipality. The size of the external market is determined to have a varyingimpact depending both on the size of the market place, and the type of the retail branch investigated.
The relevance of residential segregation and ethnic enclaves for labor market sorting of immigrants has been investigated by a large body of literature. Previous literature presents competing arguments and mixed results for the effects of segregation and ethnic concentration on various labor market outcomes. The geographical size of the area at which segregation and/or ethnic concentration is measured, however, is left to empirical work to determine. We argue that ethnic concentration and segregation should not be used interchangeably, and more importantly, the geographical area at which they are measured relates directly to different mechanisms. We use a probabilistic approach to identify the likelihood that an immigrant is employed or a self-employed entrepreneur in the year 2005 with respect to residential segregation and ethnic concentration at the level of the neighborhood, municipality, and local labor market level jointly. We study three groups of immigrants that accentuate the differences between forced and pulled migrants: (i) the first 15 member states of European Union (referred to as EU 15) and the Nordic countries, (ii) the Balkan countries, and (iii) countries in the Middle East. We find that ethnic enclaves, proxied by ethnic concentration at varying levels, indicate mixed results for the different immigrant groups we study, both for their employment and entrepreneurship probability, whereas residential segregation has a more uniformly distributed result where its relationship to any of the two labor market outcomes is almost always negative or insignificant.
Retail is concentrated in areas where demand is high. A measure of market potential can be used to calculate place-specific demand for retail services. The effect of distance on market potential depends on the willingness of consumers to travel for the products they purchase. The spatial reach of demand is frequently operationalized using a distance-decay function. The purpose of this paper is to estimate such distance-decay functions for different branches of the retail sector. The paper uses spatial data from the Stockholm region in Sweden. The results indicate that, in line with theory, there are indeed differences in the distance decay of demand among retail subsectors.
We analyze the relationship between residence in an ethnic enclave and immigrants' labor market integration with respect to finding a first job in the receiving country. The analysis distinguishes between the size and the quality of the ethnic enclaves, where quality is measured in terms of employment rate among ethnic peers in the same neighborhood. We use longitudinal geo-coded registry data for two distinct groups of immigrants arriving in the Stockholm metropolitan area to investigate their initial labor market contact. The first group of immigrants moved from the Balkans in the early 1990s following the Yugoslavian war, and the second group arrived from the Middle East following the second Iraq War in 2006. We estimate the probability of finding a first job using probit regressions and complement the analysis with additional duration models. To draw causal inference, we use instrumentation that combines initial neighborhood variables with citywide variation over time. We provide empirical evidence that the employment rate of the respective immigrant group in the vicinity facilitates labor market integration of new immigrants. The influences of the overall employment rate and the share of conationals in the neighborhood tend to be positive, but less robustly so. Our results are consistent with the notion that the qualitative nature of an enclave is at least as important as the sheer number of ethnic peers in helping new immigrants find jobs.
In this paper, we employ geo-coded data at a fine spatial resolution for Sweden’s metropolitan areas to assess retail co-location. Retail clusters and their place in urban space are assessed from several angles. The probability of a specific type of retail unit to be established in a 250 by 250 m square is modelled as a function of (i) the presence of other similar retail establishments, (ii) the presence of stores that belong to other retail sectors and (iii) other characteristics of the square area, and its access to demand in the pertinent urban landscape. The analysis clarifies which types of retail clusters one can expect to find in a metropolitan region, as well as their relationship to the urban landscape. We analyse three distinct types of stores: clothing, household appliances, and specialized stores. Stores with high intensities of interaction are co-located, and predominantly located close to the urban cores, consistent with predictions from bid rent theory and central place theory. We further document negative location tendencies between shops that sell frequently purchased products and shops that sell durables. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of demand in the close surroundings, which is particularly strong for small-scale establishments.
Culture and creativity have been seen as catalysts for social change, urban diversity and revitalisation of neighbourhoods by thinkers such as Richard Florida and Charles Landry. The creative and cultural sectors are also viewed as essential parts of urban economies, both as factors attracting population and as a dynamic part of the economy with strong growth. This means that these sectors stimulate economic growth in cities in several ways. From descriptive statistics one knows that occupation in the creative and cultural sectors is spatially concentrated in large metropolitan regions. This observation, and other theoretical arguments, stress that the performance and growth of these sectors should be assumed to be dependent on agglomeration economies. In this analysis, the authors examine the relationship between spatial distribution and growth of occupation, in a sample of people working in the creative and cultural sectors, in relation to growth in cities in Sweden. One interesting finding from the empirical analysis is that, when the authors analyse differences between the core and peripheral parts of functional regions, they find that there are no real signs of significant differences between them. In particular, they find that in the peripheral municipalities (suburbs) that surround the core municipalities, the occupation in the creative and cultural sectors is more correlated to population growth in these municipalities than proximity to creative and cultural occupation in the core parts of the functional regions. From a policy perspective, this means that investments in culture not only matter for the biggest cities and city centres, but also for the medium and smaller-sized regions, as well as the suburbs.
This paper investigates how accessibility to knowledge is related to the new firm formation in Sweden. Utilizing municipal level data, the paper examines how and to what extent geographic proximity to establish-ments that are specialized in formal knowledge creation plays a role for the overall entrepreneurial milieu in a city region. While measuring accessibility to knowledge at intra-municipal, intra-regional and extra-regional levels, the paper maps out the clustering patterns of new firms and ranks the municipalities by their perfor-mance in creating an entrepreneurial milieu. The clustering patterns of new firms highlight critical factors in new firm formation and entrepreneurial performance of regions.
This paper offers a unique empirical approach to detect co-location patterns in the retail sector. We analyse the co-location of retail service establishments in Sweden by using geo-coded data. We pinpoint each establishment in Sweden down to a 250 by 250 metre square. Our analysis captures a general pattern for the co-location of different types of retailing activities, also taking into account several spatial attributes of location. We study the three major retail markets in Sweden (Stockholm, Malmö, and Gothenburg). We position the paper within a framework in which the presence of an economic activity in space is explained by the spatial attributes of the place as well as the nature of the economic activity. Our empirical design follows a probabilistic approach, whereby the probability of finding a particular type of retailing activity in a square is explained by the presence of similar and different kinds of retailing activities in the respective square, as well as by the characteristics of their location. We select three major and distinct types of retailing stores: clothing, household appliances, and specialized stores. Our findings are well in line with the propositions of bid rent theory and central place theory for retail markets. We further document negative location tendencies between shops that sell frequently purchased products and shops that sell durables. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of demand in the close surroundings, which is particularly strong for small-scale establishments.
This paper explores the role of retail as an amenity and how it contributes to place attractiveness. In this investigation the impact of accessibility to shops on average house prices is investigated using a fixed effect estimation. The analysis use data for Swedish municipalities through the years 2002-2008. The empirical design is constructed using the across-cities spatial equilibrium framework of Roback (1982), and house prices are assumed to reflect the attractiveness of municipalities. In order to capture the precise impact from retail access, mean wages, population density, unemployment, leisure service concentration, and municipal tax levels are controlled for. Results indicate a strong relationship between retail access and place attractiveness, where a retail-premium on house prices is found to be present for Swedish municipalities.
Retail city: the relationship between place attractiveness and accessibility to shops. Spatial Economic Analysis. This paper explores the role of retailers as an urban amenity. Using data for Swedish rural and city municipalities for 2002–08, ‘accessibility-to-shops’ measures are constructed for the shops in the municipalities and the hosting regions separately to examine the relationship between consumption possibilities and place attractiveness in a spatial continuum. Place attractiveness is proxied by a Q ratio for Swedish housing investment based on Tobin’s Q. Access to stores within municipal market boundaries is found to be relevant for the place attractiveness of city municipalities, whereas no such relationship is evident for rural municipalities.
The thesis in hand presents four individual chapters, all of which explore the spatial aspects of the retail sector. The theoretical framework used in all four papers is vastly rooted in the urban and regional economics literature. Using novel data from Sweden for the application of various econometric methods, the thesis investigates (i) the distance sensitivity of demand and market reach for various types of retail activities, (ii) the spatial composition of retail markets and co-location patterns between the various branches of the sector, (iii) the spatial determinants of independent retailers’ productivity, and (iv) the relationship between the retail sector and place attractiveness.
The first paper (co-authored with Johan Klaesson) establishes a methodological framework for estimating distance decay and market accessibility for various types of retail activities given a lack of consumer data. The paper addresses the heterogeneous nature of the sector and provides a solid categorization for various types of retail activities. The second paper (coauthored with Johan P. Larsson) employs a unique empirical approach to characterize the location and co-location of retailers in the metropolitan markets. The analysis captures the co-location tendencies between various types of retailers at a highly disaggregated geographical level, where the importance of access to demand in the pertinent urban landscape is also accentuated.
In the third paper, I investigate the spatial determinants of retail productivity. The focus of the paper is on the influence of market size and regional hierarchy on the productivity of independent retailers. The results show a higher productivity premium from the immediate market potential for stores located in central markets compared to stores located in non-central markets. On the other hand, regional market potential is found to play an equally important role for the productivity of stores located both in central and non-central markets. In the fourth paper, I address the role of retail as an urban amenity. In the empirical analysis, to capture the relevance of consumption possibilities for place attractiveness, “access to stores” measures are constructed for both the municipal and regional levels. Although consumption possibilities in the region are found to be positively associated with the place attractiveness of both rural and city municipalities, store access in municipal market boundaries is found to be relevant only for the place attractiveness of city municipalities.
How important is regional hierarchy for retailers’ productivity? This paper investigates the determinants of independent retailers’ productivity in Sweden between 2002 and 2008 with respect to market size and regional hierarchy. Using an accessible market potential approach, the impact of the potential demand in close proximity, and in the region is investigated separately for stores in central and peripheral retail markets. The findings suggest that the market size in close proximity has a higher impact on the productivity of stores located in central markets, whereas the market potential in the region has similar productivity returns for both stores in central markets and stores in non-central markets.
This paper investigates returns to location in the retail sector and further analyzes the systematic variations across central and peripheral retail markets, as well as across different types of retailing activities. The empirical design utilizes individual level data, where the earnings of individuals working in the retail sector are used as a proxy for retail performance, which allows for a comparison across different types of retailing activities, although the sector as a whole is highly heterogeneous. In order to capture the urban-periphery interaction in retail markets, an accessible market potential measure is used, which allows for capturing the impact from potential demand in close proximity, in the region and from outside of the region separately. In the analysis, the impacts of spatial, store, and individual characteristics are analyzed for four types of retailing activities: food retailing, clothing, household retailing and specialized stores. The results are in line with previous theoretical arguments that rely on traditional location theories. There is a distinct variation between urban and peripheral retail markets, as well as between different types of retailing activities. Market size in close proximity is found to play an important role for stores selling goods for frequent purchase, whereas the relevant market extends beyond municipal borders for retailers selling goods for less frequent purchase. The competition effect is evident for non-central markets, driven from close proximity to large central markets.
Understanding more about the geographic location of leisure services is an important quest for research. For a long time now in developed economies, almost all employment growth is occurring within the service sector. In this sector, leisure services are fast growers. This means that the location of these services is important for economic growth and for employment opportunities of local market areas. Regional policy-makers time and again highlight these sectors as future engines of growth. This paper investigates the role of local demand in determining the availability and the scale of various types of leisure services. The analysis is motivated by observed regularities that indicate large and persistent interregional differences in the location and growth of leisure services. Based on a New Economic Geography framework, we investigate the role of local and regional demand for the size of leisure services in geographically separate markets in Sweden. We use data for 290 Swedish municipalities for the period 2002–2013 and run year-municipality fixed-effects regressions. Our main findings suggest a strong dependency on local demand, and less on the demand originating from other regions.
In this chapter, we characterize the broad patterns in restaurant location across the urban areas of Sweden for the year 2015. Using geo-coded data on the neighbourhood level, we analyse the availability of restaurants at two different neighbourhood aggregations with respect to potential demand, local competition, complementing shopping opportunities, and other characteristics of the urban landscape through a probabilistic empirical framework. We hold constant key characteristics of the urban regions and identify our parameters by exploiting within-region variation at the level of neighbourhoods. Our analysis indicates some but limited strategic complementarities between retail and consumer service branches and restaurants. Any significant probability of finding a restaurant in the neighbourhood with respect to the presence of a service establishment attenuates with distance or entirely dissipates, indicating a highly localized spatial dependence. Employment and population density matter significantly, and their importance extends beyond the very immediate neighbourhood. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Purpose – Which retail services are co-located in space? Is it possible to categorize retail stores of different kinds with respect to their location pattern? Acknowledging the spatial dependency between different and similar kinds of retailing activities, the aim of this paper is to find if and to what extent co-location is present in a retail market and what kind of retailing activities are co-located.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyse the co-location of different types of retail stores in Sweden by using geo-coded data. The data they use allows them to pinpoint each establishment in Sweden down to a 250 by 250m square in space. First, they identify a measure of co-location for each retail service by utilizing pairwise correlations between the different retail service establishments with respect to the squares in which they are present. Later, by using the finest level of industrial categorization for all physical retailing activities (and limiting their geographical unit to the Stockholm metropolitan market), they perform factor analysis to nest these retailing activities under relevant categories based on their co-location pattern.
Findings – In this analysis the authors obtain four major factors for the squares with retail stores, in which several kinds of retail activities are nested. These factors reveal a certain degree of location commonality for the markets in question.
Originality/value – The authors' empirical design is based on a highly disaggregated spatial information and the methodology is novel in a sense that it has not been used to address a similar question. Rather than sampling, the authors use the total population, where they take all physical retailing activities into account to be able to draw a general picture for the co-location phenomena in the entire retail market.