COVID-19 matters: The impact of corona on the retail sector
The current corona pandemic has a huge impact on our society and the economy. The Dutch economy shrank with 8.5% in the second quarter of 2020, while the IMF has predicted that the overall world economy will shrink by 4.9% this year. Although the vaccination program is slowly picking up steam, the pandemic is far…
Effects of city wide parking price increases in Amsterdam
What are the effects of the city wide parking prices increases that were implied in Amsterdam in April 2019? This is the main question that Leonardo Nunes addresses in his master thesis on ’Parking policy: Evidence from Amsterdam’. In order to answer this question, he used transaction data to investigate how these price increases affected parking…
Europe’s population density patterns mapped in Nature Communications
Filipe Batista e Silva is a PhD candidate at SPINlab working for the European Union’s Joint Research Centre. Over the past years he worked on uncovering temporal changes in Europe’s population density patterns using a data fusion approach. He combines official statistics with geospatial data from emerging sources to produce and validate a European Union-wide…
The effect of ozone air pollution on physical capacity
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…
Incidence of Covid-19 and connections with air pollution exposure
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…
The Covid-19 crisis must not undermine the green transition
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…
Corona crisis – The impact of Covid-19 on the aviation sector
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…
What are migrants willing to pay for better home country institutions?
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).…
U-PASS: Chinese-European research cooperation on improving urban transport
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…
High(er) wind turbines lower residential property values
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…