Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15303
Authors: Walker Hanlon; Stephan Heblich
Abstract: This article reviews recent literature using insights from history to answer central questions in urban economics. This area of research has seen rapid growth in the past decade, thanks to new technologies that have made available increasingly rich data stretching far back in time. The focus is to review innovative methods to exploit historical information and discuss applications of these data that provide new insights into (i) the long run growth of cities or regional economies and (ii) the spatial organization of economic activities within cities. The review also surveys the growing literature outside urban economics that uses the historical urbanization as a proxy for economic growth, discusses differences between how economic historians and urban economists think about the relationship between urbanization and growth, and considers how these views might be reconciled.
Keywords: urban economics; economic history; urbanization; growth; review
JEL Codes: R00; N7; N9
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| historical urbanization (N90) | economic growth (O49) |
| new technologies and infrastructure (O39) | urban development (R58) |
| bombing of Japanese cities during WWII (L94) | city size (R12) |
| historical economic factors (N13) | city growth (R11) |