The impact of facemask requirements on shopping streets
Covid-19 brings about unprecedented economic change. What exactly are the consequences of the policies pursued during the pandemic for retail and, in particular, for shopping streets? That is the question that economists Hans Koster, Jos van Ommeren, Cheng Keat Tang and Nander Bras answer in a recent study. Their research is based on rental income…
Congestion matters – Successful final workshop research project U-SMILE
“Smart incentives in between pricing and rewarding” (Slimme prikkels tussen prijzen en belonen) was the title of the final workshop of research project U-SMILE (Urban Smart Measures and Incentives for quality of Life Enhancement). The event was part of the VerDuS SURF*-festival and took place in the morning of March 25. With more than 50…
VOGON Research Award 2020 for Eric Koomen and Dani Broitman
Spatial Economics’ Eric Koomen and former postdoc Dani Broitman won the VOGON Award 2020 for the best paper in the magazine Real Estate Research Quarterly. The paper (in Dutch) ‘Stedelijke centra magneten voor woningen‘ (translated as: Urban centers magnets for homes) contributes to the social debate about housing production. The Committee praises the clear analysis…
Tradeable credits for congestions management – support / reject?
How much support is there for the introduction of tradeable peak credits in order to solve congestion? Lizet Krabbenborg (former PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology, currently researcher at KiM) conducted research into this question, which resulted in a thesis entitled Tradable Credits for Congestion Management: support/reject? Lizet was involved in research project U-SMILE – Urban Smart…
Rents and returns in the private rented sector in Amsterdam
In recent research, Jan Rouwendal and Maureen Lankhuizen examine developments in rents and returns in the private rented sector. The private rented sector had little room to manoeuvre in the Dutch housing market after the Second World War. It was hemmed in between a sizeable social rental sector and a tax-advantaged owner-occupied sector. In recent…
E-course smart mobility: Key findings from 3 VerDuS-SURF projects
Smart mobility could make policy objectives be achieved faster and more efficiently. In order to assess these promises and to exploit the potential it is necessary to equip professionals involved in policy making and delivery with a solid set of knowledge and methods. For this purpose, an e-course for policy makers designed, presenting the key…
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…