As part of his PhD on the spatial distributional effects of the climate transition, Yashvant Premchand, together with Peter Mulder, mapped out the costs and benefits of housing construction in climate-risked areas. Their research shows that this debate requires more nuance than is often assumed. It is not simply a choice between building in “safe”…

Which house price data can researchers use? Ideally, one would use sales prices: the prices at which houses were actually sold. In practice, however, this data isn’t always available, or it only becomes available with a delay. Therefore, list prices or assessed values ​​(such as the official tax assessments like WOZ values in the Netherlands)…

High-speed rail (HSR) is expanding rapidly and is often promoted as a fast and sustainable mode of transport. A recently published article by Hans Koster and Jacques Thisse reviews a large body of theory and empirical evidence and shows that, while HSR can deliver substantial aggregate benefits, it also reshapes residential and employment patterns. These spatial reallocations…

The high walls of import tariffs introduced by the United States over the past six months have had negative consequences for economic activity. Which European and Dutch regions face the greatest risks? This question is addressed by Dimosthenis Sampson (University of Groningen), Bart Los (University of Groningen), Spatial Economics’ Mark Thissen, and Xianjia Ye (University…

An increasing number of developing countries are restricting non-renewable natural resource exports to encourage domestic processing, move up the global value chain, and spur local development. Maarten Bosker, Else-Marie van den Herik, Paul Pelzl, and Steven Poelhekke study the local labour-market effects of Indonesia’s voluntary export ban on unprocessed nickel and bauxite in 2014, previously…

The United Nations has released its latest projections on global urbanisation, a periodically published outlook that plays a central role in providing insight into how cities around the world are expected to grow in the coming decades. A key part of the spatial forecasting in this edition of the ‘World Urbanization Prospects 2025’ was supported…

On 27 November 2025, Mark Thissen delivered his inaugural lecture. In his lecture, titled ‘Macht en fragmentatie in regionale productieketens: van just-in-time naar just-in-case’ (Power and Fragmentation in Regional Production Chains: From Just-in-Time to Just-in-Case) he argued that political and economic changes around the world are increasing the importance of region-specific policies – and, consequently,…

What is the societal and economic value of NV Zeedijk? This question was addressed by Thomas de Graaff, Casper Klipp en Hans Koster. NV Zeedijk was founded in the 1980s to revitalize the then-deteriorated Zeedijk area in Amsterdam. By strategically purchasing, renovating, and actively managing properties, the organization – with the Municipality of Amsterdam as its largest shareholder –…

Recent research by Jan Rouwendal, Or Levkovich, Edwin Buitelaar and Jip Claassens, published in Regional Science and Urban Economics, shows that the prices of older commercial buildings increase relative to younger ones. According to the researchers, this is the result of the so-called “vintage effect”: in a growing real estate market, older buildings turn out to…

The economy of the Metropolitan Region Amsterdam (MRA) is currently growing faster than that of the Netherlands, the EU, and other major European cities. The region performs well in terms of employment, education levels, and accessibility, but it is vulnerable due to structural challenges such as an aging population and declining labour productivity growth. Key…