Intra‐regional employment growth in luxembourg (1994–2005)

Abstract

The specialization of city-centres towards more advanced service activities has mostly been studied in the largest city-regions, the case of smaller urban centres being less well documented. In that context, the objective of this article is to analyse the role of sectoral and regional factors in employment growth in Luxembourg between 1994 and 2005. Using statistical data from the Luxembourg General Inspection of Social Security, this contribution distinguishes 12 categories of manufacturing industries and services according to an OECD-Eurostat knowledge-based classification. Five intra-regional areas are distinguished based on morphological and functional criteria in the Luxembourg Metropolitan Area. Using several indexes, this article first analyses the sectoral specialization and geographical concentration of employment. A model of intra-regional employment growth, initially developed by Marimon and Zilibotti and applied at the European level, is then shown to account for 40 per cent of employment growth. An estimation of the contributions of sectoral and geographical factors highlights the primacy of the latter over the former. Finally, the construction of virtual economies confirms the City's overall lower performance as compared to its close periphery. Results underscore a process of functional integration in the Luxembourg metropolitan area: as the core of the city undergoes a specialization process, the urban area benefits from a relocation of activities less sensitive to distance and transaction costs, while the periphery becomes increasingly diversified, notably in the South where traditional industrial activities are being replaced by service activities. These results suggest that the evolution pattern of employment growth in Luxembourg is very similar to that of some larger metropolitan centres, owing to its exceptional financial service activities.

The geography of innovation in a small metropolitan region: An intra‐regional approach in Luxembourg

“…At the opposite end of the scale, the propensity to innovate is lowest in the south and commuter areas. These results confirm previous studies which show that Luxembourg's national territory is very heterogeneous despite its small size (Walther and Dautel ).…”

“…The geography of innovation is investigated in terms of two different spatial factors. First, we divide space into five functional regions, which are organized around the city centre, Luxembourg City, in accordance with morphological and functional criteria recently used by Walther and Dautel () to analyse intra‐regional employment growth in Luxembourg (see Figure ). The existence of the five intra‐regional units based on an aggregation of municipalities (Local Administrative Unit 2 level according to the EU Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) allow us to study centre‐periphery dynamics on the basis of a monocentric vision of the nation state: (1) Luxembourg City; (2) The Luxembourg urban area (not including Luxembourg City); (3) The suburban area, comprising municipalities in which the proportion of commuters working in the agglomeration was higher than 40 per cent of the active population in 2002; (4) The south area comprising municipalities in which the proportion of commuters working in the agglomeration was lower than 40 per cent of the active population in 2002, located in the country's southern former industrial basin; and (5) A commuter area in which the proportion of commuters working in the agglomeration was between 8.3 and 39.9 per cent of the active population in 2002.…”

The effect of workplace relocation on individuals’ activity travel behavior

“…The high congestion levels experienced in Luxembourg are also related to the monocentric development of the country. Out of the 380,000 jobs available in the country, approximately one in two is located in Luxembourg City (Walther & Dautel, 2010). In order to decrease the pressure (in terms of commuting flow, residential prices, etc.)…”