Exponential or Power Distance-Decay for Commuting? An Alternative Specification

Jacob J de Vries, Peter Nijkamp and Piet Rietveld

Environment and Planning A, 2009, vol. 41, issue 2, 461-480

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the functional form of distance decay for commuting flows between municipalities in Denmark. Our inference is based on a single equation that includes variables to capture the effect of spatial structure. Special attention is given to a proper estimation method: we estimate the distance-decay parameters by nonlinear weighted least-squares with balancing factors. It appears that neither an exponential nor a power distance-decay function fits the data well. Using a spline regression we find a cost elasticity of – 4 for distances around 20 km and a much smaller value for shorter and longer distances. It appears that the logarithm of distance decay can be described adequately as a (downward) logistic function of log cost.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a39369 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Exponential or power distance-decay for commuting? An alternative specification (2005)
Working Paper: Exponential or Power Distance-decay for Commuting? An Alternative Specification (2004)
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:sae:envira:v:41:y:2009:i:2:p:461-480

DOI: 10.1068/a39369

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().