ABSTRACT

We propose a model of excess commuting based on search costs in the labor market and show how the equilibrium rate of excess commuting is determined by the degree of geographical job concentration – without neglecting the importance of the size of the labor market and commuting costs. We test – and largely confirm – the main predictions of our model using Belgian population data on commuting flows between all its 589 municipalities. Our approach is to aggregate the data into 640 sectors and skill-specific groups in order to generate heterogeneity in the excess commuting rate. We find that workers in sectors with a high degree of job concentration have lower rates of excess commuting and that workers that operate in larger labor markets, such as higher educated workers and men compared to women, have higher rates of excess commuting.

摘要

我们提出了一种基于劳动力市场中搜索成本的超勤通勤模型，并展示了超勤通勤的均衡率是如何由地理工作集中度决定的，而又没有忽略劳动力市场规模和通勤成本的重要性。我们使用比利时人口数据测试了其589个城市之间的通勤流量，并对模型的主要预测进行了测试并在很大程度上确认了这一预测。我们的方法是将数据汇总到640个部门和特定技能组中，以便在通勤率过高时产生异质性。我们发现，在工作集中度较高的部门中，上下班通勤率较低，而在较大的劳动力市场中工作的工人（例如，受过良好教育的工人和男性，而与女性相比，上下班通勤率较高）。