When Do People Demand Services? A Microsimulation Model for Alternative Shopping Hours with Data from the German Time Use Survey, ServSim

Abstract

The objective of this study is the empirical founded analysis of the daily demand for service activities, over the hours of the day. Our microdata base consists of time-diaries of the nation wide Time Use Survey 2001/2002 of the German Federal Statistical Office. The frame for this analysis are new shopping hours regulations in Germany. After an illustration of the historical development of shopping hours in Germany and after a short discussion of the liberalization of shopping hours we describe the daily structure of the demand for service activities. We analyze the demand structure for two alternative scenarios and for important socio-economic groups of the society on the basis of our new microsimulation model ServSim. Background of these two scenarios are population projections for the years 2010 and 2020 which were conducted by the Federal Statistical Office Germany. These projections were used to adjust (reweight) the data by a 'static-aging'-approach. The multivariate explanation of the demand for service activities inconducted. The descriptive results, the microeconometric estimation outcomes and the Microsimulation results show clear distinctions of the daily demand in particular against the background of socio-economic groups of the society.