Cross-sectional growth in US cities from 1990 to 2000

This paper analyses the growth of American cities, understood as the growth of the population or of the per capita income, from 1990 to 2000. This empirical analysis uses data from all the cities (incorporated places) with more than 25,000 inhabitants in the year 2000 (1152 cities). The results show that while common convergence behaviour is observed in both population and per capita income growth, there are differences in the evolution of the distributions: the population distribution remains almost unchanged, while the per capita income distribution makes a great movement to the right. We use two different methodologies to test cross-sectional convergence across cities: linear growth models (allowing for spatial spillovers between locations) and spatial quantile regressions. We find evidence of significant spatial effects and non-linear behaviour.