History and the sizes of cities

Hoyt Bleakley and Jeffrey Lin

No 15-6, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

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.

Keywords: Multiple equilibria; Locational fundamentals; Path dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 N90 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2015-01-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Journal Article: History and the Sizes of Cities (2015)
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