Series/Report no.:
55th Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "World Renaissance: Changing roles for people and places", 25-28 August 2015, Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract:
In this paper we study how the determinants of regional commuting in Italy have evolved in the past fifteen years. Using labour force data from 1992 to 2008 we estimate a model where the probability of commuting is regressed on a wide set of individual, job, firm and regional characteristics. Specifically, we focus on understanding how the increased exibility of the labour market in the late nineties/early twenties have affected the individual decision to commute across regions. Consistent with the previous literature, we identify specific types of individual working in firms with well-defined features who are more keen to commute. However, even though temporary employees tend to commute more than permanent employees, the increased utilization of temporary contracts did not have a strong impact on the commuting decisions of Italian workers.