American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
History and the Sizes of Cities
American Economic Review
vol. 105,
no. 5, May 2015
(pp. 558–63)
Abstract
We contrast evidence of urban path dependence with efforts to analyze calibrated models of city sizes. Recent evidence of persistent city sizes following the obsolescence of historical advantages suggests that path dependence cannot be understood as the medium-run effect of legacy capital but instead as the long-run effect of equilibrium selection. In contrast, a different, recent literature uses stylized models in which fundamentals uniquely determine city size. We show that a commonly used model is inconsistent with evidence of long run persistence in city sizes and propose several modifications that might allow for multiplicity and thus historical path dependence.Citation
Bleakley, Hoyt, and Jeffrey Lin. 2015. "History and the Sizes of Cities." American Economic Review 105 (5): 558–63. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20151069Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- N90 Regional and Urban History: General
- R11 Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes