Using gravity models for the effective determination of socioeconomic locality : local labour markets in central Macedonia.

Abstract

The discussion about the effectiveness of active policy measures that consider spatial socioeconomic aspects has become especially important in light of recent socio-economic developments. The paper presents an alternative methodology for the determination of spatial boundaries for any socioeconomic locality, based on the gravity models tradition. We apply the described methodology to the Region of Central Macedonia and show that there are significant discontinuities between administrative spatial segregation on the one hand and socioeconomic on the other. The latter provides evidence for the inappropriateness of simply following the administrative boundaries and reveals the usefulness of our proposal.