On this page you find my publications and working papers in English. See also ORCID.

Highlighted publications

Do highway widenings reduce congestion? (2022)

Ioulia Ossokina, Jos van Ommeren and Henk van Mourik, Journal of Economic Geography forthcoming

Using high frequency Dutch detector data, we find that highway widenings lead to large travel time savings. These savings occur despite strong increases in traffic flow. The welfare benefits in the short run already cover 40% of the widenings' investment costs.

Comparing self-navigation and video mode in a choice experiment to measure public space preferences (2022)

Yuwen Zhao, Pauline van den Berg, Ioulia Ossokina and Theo Arentze, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 95: 101828

3D dynamic visualization of urban design is useful to study people's valuations of public space attributes. We compare valuations derived from an experiment with a video and one with a self-navigation game visualization. Both lead to similar results. The choice of visualization mode can thus be based on other (secondary) considerations such as required sample size, respondents’ experiences with navigation interfaces, and the costs and effort needed to build visualization.

Reference-dependent housing choice behaviour: Why are elderly reluctant to move? (2022)

Ioulia Ossokina & Theo Arentze, Housing studies forthcoming.

Does information encourage or discourage tenants to accept energy retrofitting of homes? (2021)

Ioulia Ossokina, Stephan Kerperien and Theo Arentze, Energy Economics 103: 105534

We study whether providing information about the consequences of residential energy retrofitting encourages public housing tenants to agree with retrofitting. We find that: (i) tenants require a return of 30% on energy retrofitting of their dwellings; (ii) information on comfort-related consequences of renovations increases support; (iii) Information on financial consequences reduces the support.

Best living concepts for the elderly: a stated choice experiment and architectural design (2020)

Ioulia Ossokina, Theo Arentze, Dick van Gameren & Dirk van den Heuvel, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 35: 847-865

We combine the insights from social sciences and architecture to design best living concepts for elderly homeowners. We perform a stated choice experiment and derive the willingness-to-pay for different residential attributes. We show how these attributes can be traded off against each other in architectural design to create best living concepts.

Spatial and welfare effects of automated driving: will cities grow, decline or both? (2019)

George Gelauff, Ioulia Ossokina, Coen Teulings, Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice: 121: 277-294

In a general equilibrium model, we show that automated driving can lead both, to growth and decline of cities. More productive time use during car trips leads to suburbanization. Fast and comfortable door-to-door automated public transit attracts people to cities. A combination of the two results in population clustering in the largest, most attractive cities, at the expense of smaller cities and non-urban regions.

Land use, worker heterogeneity and welfare benefits of public goods (2018)

Coen Teulings, Ioulia Ossokina & Henri de Groot, Journal of Urban Economics 103: 67-82

We construct a spatial general equilibrium model, in which investments in public goods lead to population changes in their vicinity. The effect is twofold: (i) population density increases; (ii) share of population groups who value these public goods increases. The model is estimated on Dutch data and applied to study the welfare gains from a large railway investment. Welfare gains are largest for highly educated. Welfare gains from population relocation account for up to 30% of the total benefits.

Urban traffic externalities (2015)

Ioulia Ossokina and Gerard Verweij. Regional science and urban economics, 55, 1-13.

We show that the new bypass N14 near The Hague led to environmental benefits by reducing traffic nuisance on local streets. We combine a quasi-experiment and a fixed effect hedonic price model. We find that a 50% lower traffic density induced some 3000 euro welfare gain per household. Residents did not foresee this change in advance however.

Working papers

Do you listen to your neighbour? Block leader effects in community-led energy retrofits

Tije van Casteren, Ioulia Ossokina, Theo Arentze, submitted to a journal.

Community-led initiatives can play an important role in reducing the barriers to the adoption of energy saving measures in homes. We exploit unique data on 79 Dutch community-led retrofitting campaigns in 2014-2020. We focus on the role of block leaders - residents who managed the communities - and analyse the peer externalities they exert on other community members. Contrary to much of the literature, peer externalities here are not driven by visibility and imitation, but by offering access to information and by cheap talk. We find a spatial distance decay in the peer effects with the largest effect within 200 meters from a block leader. Our insights suggest that communities should optimally spread out leaders geographically and select leaders whose dwellings are representative of the community's existing building stock.

The urban economics of retail (2022)

Ioulia Ossokina, Jan Svitak, Coen Teulings, Revise & Resubmit by an economic journal.

Using property-level data from 327 larger shopping areas in the Netherlands, we show that the spatial structure of a shopping area resembles a monocentric city in miniature. Just like a monocentric city, a shopping area has a pronounced center where the rents are the highest and the vacancy the lowest, and a negative retail rent gradient from this center to the edges. The average retail rent gradient is −20% per 100 meter distance, and the vacancy odds are twice as high at the edge as in the center. In a simple model of land market competition, we illustrate how the negative retail rent gradient helps tackle the adverse consequences of structural drops in retail demand.

Do modern cities encourage or discourage walking of health-impaired seniors? (2022)

Ioulia Ossokina, Pleun van Wijk, Birgit Jurgenhake, Theo Arentze, working paper.

Physical activity outdoors is essential for healthy aging (UN, 2020). In this paper we exploit a stated choice experiment with visualizations to study which characteristics of urban sidewalks are most influential in stimulating walking outdoors at older age for people facing mobility impairments.

Older publications

Geographical range of amenity benefits: hedonic price analysis for railway stations (2010)

Ioulia Ossokina, CPB discussion paper no. 146

Adoption subsidy versus technology standards (2008)

Ioulia Ossokina and Otto Swank. De Economist, 156 (3), 241-267.

Cost-benefit analysis of a railway station area development (2008)

Carel Eijgenraam and Ioulia Ossokina. In Bruinsma, F., Pels, E. and H. Priemus (eds.), Railway development: Impact on urban dynamics, pp. 191-211, Physica-Verlag.

The optimal degree of polarization (2004)

Ioulia Ossokina and Otto Swank. European Journal of Political Economy, 20, 255-262.

Polarization, political instability and active learning (2003)

Ioulia Ossokina and Otto Swank. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 105(1), 1-14.