Too far to go to work? Examining the effect of changes in the time taken to commute on regional unemployment

Ales Franc (), Sona Kukuckova (Balcarkova) and Marek Litzman
Additional contact information
Ales Franc: Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic

No 2024-94, MENDELU Working Papers in Business and Economics from Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics

Abstract: Time spent commuting plays a significant role in decision-making within the labour market, particularly for job seekers. Investments in road infrastructure have a direct effect on commuting times and thus may also have an effect on the local labour markets. The aim of the article is to evaluate the effect of improvements in infrastructure on regional unemployment. In this paper, we use a unique database that includes data on the time taken to commute from all municipalities in the Czech Republic (n=6237) to their regional centres for every month between March 2014 and December 2022 (106 periods). Overall 1534 changes that met the criteria for a significant change in travelling time were identified. Our results suggest that a one-minute drop in commuting time from the respective municipality to the regional centre is linked to a 0.07 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate one year later, in comparison to the control group. The ratio rises over time, after five years, the same one-minute reduction in commuting time, is then related to a 0.19 percentage point drop in unemployment. Therefore, better infrastructure can help to reduce differences in regional rates of unemployment and can justify infrastructure investments.

Keywords: commuting; unemployment; road infrastructure; OSRM; New Economic Geography; inter-regional disparities; regional development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 J61 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18
Date: 2024-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-mac, nep-tra, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ftp.mendelu.cz/RePEc/men/wpaper/94_2024.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:men:wpaper:94_2024

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MENDELU Working Papers in Business and Economics from Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Luděk Kouba ().