Scholars from various scientific disciplines work on understanding the impact of air pollution. Most of the studies focus on long-term health consequences, but there is now increasing attention for immediate effects on labour productivity, physical effort, cognitive performance, and decision-making. At the spatial economics department, Jos van Ommeren and Joris Klingen recently contributed to this…

The Covid-19 crisis has gripped the entire world. Major sources of contamination in China and Europe are often found in areas where there is air pollution. One of the many questions that the virus raises is therefore: Is there a connection between air pollution and the degree of susceptibility to Covid-19? Bo Andree investigated this question…

It often comes different than one hopes, and sometimes even worse than one fears. The Covid-19 crisis is more and more being used to roll back existing environmental regulations. Brazil is reducing environmental enforcement for deforestation. Poland may not continue its green transition for the time being. Donald Trump is revoking environmental regulation in the…

On January 24, IATA (International Air Transport Association), released the IATA Economics’ Chart of the Week, focusing on the impact of the Corona crisis. Expectations (hopes) were the international airline industry would be resilient: the 2003 SARS crisis had a major impact on Asian traffic volumes, but traffic volumes recovered quite soon. “At the peak…

Migrants from developing countries benefit greatly from their migration by earning a much higher real income in their destination country. They often also benefit from moving to a country where the quality of institutions is better than at home (in terms of, for example, less corruption, greater political stability and a firmer rule of law).…

Motivated by the worldwide shared desire and need for more efficient, reliable and environmentally sustainable urban transport, U-PASS investigates how to improve the benefits of transport, while limiting its downsides. U-PASS – Urban Public Administration and ServiceS Innovation for Innovative Urban Mobility Management and Policy) – aims to offer innovations in the design of new services…

Residential property values are negatively impacted when properties are in close proximity of a wind turbine. Compared to houses further away from wind turbines, house prices of properties within a 2 km radius from wind turbines decrease by on average 3.9 percent. These are the findings of a research carried out by Spatial Economics’ associate…

Prostitution in Amsterdam has a long history, and for a long time the Wallen area has been viewed as a great example of tolerance and freedom. However, the demand for prostitution also results in human trafficking and forced labour in the prostitution sector. Recent research on self-reported forced labour in the prostitution sector in The…

Why do shops cluster in shopping streets? This was the main question that Hans Koster, Ilias Pasidis and Jos van Ommeren addressed in their paper ‘Shopping externalities and retail concentration: Evidence from Dutch shopping streets’, forthcoming in the Journal of Urban Economics. The authors argue that shops located in shopping streets benefit from so-called shopping…

We measure the effectiveness of researchers by how many papers they publish, or how many citations they get. A new measure developed by Hsie et al. (2018) ranks them by their influence on the work of their colleagues too. Through collaborations researchers create spillovers (synergies) for one another, and also other researchers indirectly linked to…