Does urban concentration matter for changes in country economic performance?

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper uses a novel, globally-harmonised city-level dataset —with cities defined at the Functional Urban Area (FUA) level— to revisit the link between urban concentration and country-level economic dynamics. The empirical analysis, involving 108 low- and high-income countries, examines how differences in urban concentration impinge on changes in employment, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, and labour productivity at country level over the period 2000-2016. The results indicate that urban concentration reduces employment growth, but increases GDP per capita and labour productivity growth. The returns of urban concentration are higher for high- than for low-income countries, and are mainly driven by the ‘core’ of FUAs, rather than by sub-urban areas.

Keywords: Urban concentration; long-run economic dynamics; employment growth; GDP per capita growth; labour productivity; Cross-country analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 N0 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2022-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Urban Studies, 1, May, 2022, 59(6), pp. 1275 - 1299. ISSN: 0042-0980

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/108902/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does urban concentration matter for changes in country economic performance? (2022)
Working Paper: Does urban concentration matter for changes in country economic performance? (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:108902

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().