Location choice of firms with special emphasis on spatial accessibility: Enterprise Database SG/AR/AI

Abstract

Land use models play a decisive role in different domains: they allow estimating demographic trends for a given region, they enable comparisons between spatially relevant projects of public authorities, they facilitate dimensioning of public infrastructure, and they help to answer various other questions regarding possible future development of our built environment. Due to the tight interdependence between resident population (e.g. as customers or manpower) and economic activities (e.g. shops or services), location choice of firms plays an important role in comprehensive land use models. However, due to a lack of data at micro level permitting the estimation of accurate discrete choice models of firms. behaviour, there is only little research on this topic. This is especially true for location decisions of relocating firms. The aim of this thesis is to contribute in filling this gap. The presented models are based on data from the commercial registers of the Swiss cantons St. Gallen, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, and Appenzell Innerrhoden. This dataset provides information on more than 54,000 individual firms and autonomous plants for the period from 1991 to 2006 and allows tracing, among other information, the location of these firms. Combined with data from the Business and Trade Register BUR, additional information on sector affiliation and size of each firm can be considered. Firstly, firmographic events such as new establishments, business closures and migrations have been analysed. The relevance of age, size, industry and location on company migration behaviour are of particular interest. In addition, the spatial distribution of business formations and closures is observed. The individual effects of these factors are tested and quantified with a logit-loglinear model. This approach allows exploring and quantifying interaction effects between the variables on business demographic behaviour. The results prove that all four fac- tors influence the firmographic behaviour of companies. But, a comparison between the influ- ence of age and size shows that age is the predominant variable on migration behaviour whereas the size of a business has a noticeable effect on the closure rate. The complementary analyses focus on destination choice of relocating firms. Effects of various variables such as local taxes, governmental business friendliness, and accessibilities have been estimated and quantified in a discrete choice model on destination choice. The results show considerable differences between sectors. For instance, residents with graduate degrees have a significant and high positive impact on location choice of business service industries. In contrast, their effect on firms in the sector of personal services is small.