Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ades, Alberto F.
• Glaeser, Edward L.

Titel

Trade and Circuses: Explaining Urban Giants

Ist Teil von

• The Quarterly journal of economics, 1995-02, Vol.110 (1), p.195-227

Ort / Verlag

Cambridge, Mass. [etc.]: MIT Press

Erscheinungsjahr

1995

Quelle

Business Source Ultimate

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Using theory, case studies, and cross-country evidence, we investigate the factors behind the concentration of a nation's urban population in a single city. High tariffs, high costs of internal trade, and low levels of international trade increase the degree of concentration. Even more clearly, politics (such as the degree of instability) determines urban primacy. Dictatorships have central cities that are, on average, 50 percent larger than their democratic counterparts. Using information about the timing of city growth, and a series of instruments, we conclude that the predominant causality is from political factors to urban concentration, not from concentration to political change.