The effect of port activity on urban employment: an analysis for the Spanish functional urban areas

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the impact of port activity on local employment in Spain. To do so, we have used a novel panel data at the functional urban areas (FUAs) level, considering cities' functional and economic extent based on daily people's movements. We have estimated a set of equations related to the port throughput-employment relationship for 2010-2020. Several estimation techniques are applied to different employment equation specifications to check the robustness of the results to the methodology employed. Additionally, three different samples have been used to assess whether the results significantly change when non-port FUAs are considered. Our results are robust to the different specifications, finding that employment elasticity to port activity ranges between 0.005 and 0.008. We find that industrial employment is more sensitive to changes in the volume of port operations than total or service employment. Finally, the analysis shows that the results significantly change when non-port FUAs are not considered in the analysis.