IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v41y1997i1p38-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban Productivity and Factor Growth in the Late Nineteenth Century

Author

Listed:
  • Bostic, Raphael W.
  • Gans, Joshua S.
  • Stern, Scott

Abstract

This paper uncovers a series of empirical facts regarding the sources of U.S. urban growth in the 1880s. We use a large theoretical literature to provide motivations for a number of potential sources of growth, particularly those based on geographical proximity externalities. These sources are characterised and linked to empirical proxies. Then we estimate the covariation of these empirical proxies with the growth rate in output, capital and labor respectively. We find that traditional (neoclassical), several geographic externality, and socio-political factors all covary significantly with aggregate growth, though in very specific ways. For example, the size of a city (a measure of the degree of urbanization) is uncorrelated with output growth, positively correlated with labor growth, and negatively correlated with capital growth. No one extant theory of growth accounts simultaneously for all the phenomena that we observe.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Bostic, Raphael W. & Gans, Joshua S. & Stern, Scott, 1997. "Urban Productivity and Factor Growth in the Late Nineteenth Century," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 38-55, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:41:y:1997:i:1:p:38-55
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094-1190(96)91087-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert M. Solow, 1956. "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 70(1), pages 65-94.
    2. Fujita,Masahisa, 1991. "Urban Economic Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521396455, January.
    3. King, Robert G & Rebelo, Sergio T, 1993. "Transitional Dynamics and Economic Growth in the Neoclassical Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 908-931, September.
    4. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    5. Krugman, Paul, 1991. "Increasing Returns and Economic Geography," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 483-499, June.
    6. Glaeser, Edward L & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1126-1152, December.
      • Edward L. Glaeser & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1991. "Growth in Cities," NBER Working Papers 3787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Kallal, Hedi D. & Scheinkman, Jose A. & Shleifer, Andrei, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Scholarly Articles 3451309, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    7. Rosenberg, Nathan, 1963. "Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840–1910," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 414-443, December.
    8. David, Paul A. & Rosenbloom, Joshua L., 1990. "Marshallian factor market externalities and the dynamics of industrial localization," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 349-370, November.
    9. Charles R. Hulten & Robert M. Schwab, 1993. "Endogenous Growth, Public Capital, and the Convergence of Regional Manufacturing Industries," NBER Working Papers 4538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Barro, Robert J, 1990. "Government Spending in a Simple Model of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 103-126, October.
    11. Henderson, Vernon & Kuncoro, Ari & Turner, Matt, 1995. "Industrial Development in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 1067-1090, October.
    12. Romer, Paul M, 1990. "Endogenous Technological Change," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 71-102, October.
    13. Rotemberg, Julio J. & Saloner, Garth, 2000. "Competition and human capital accumulation: a theory of interregional specialization and trade," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 373-404, July.
    14. Alwyn Young, 1992. "A Tale of Two Cities: Factor Accumulation and Technical Change in Hong Kong and Singapore," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1992, Volume 7, pages 13-64, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Henderson, Vernon, 1997. "Externalities and Industrial Development," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 449-470, November.
    16. Romer, Paul M., 1990. "Human capital and growth: Theory and evidence," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 251-286, January.
    17. Miyao, Takahiro, 1987. "Dynamic urban models," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: E. S. Mills (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 877-925, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agarwalla, Astha, 2011. "Agglomeration Economies and Productivity Growth in India," IIMA Working Papers WP2011-01-08, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    2. Klein, Alexander & Crafts, Nicholas, 2015. "Agglomeration Externalities and Productivity Growth : U.S. Cities in the Railroad Era, 1880-1930," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 235, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2000. "External Economies And Location Of Industrial Activities. An Analysis Of The Spanish Case," ERSA conference papers ersa00p95, European Regional Science Association.
    4. Alexander Klein & Nicholas Crafts, 2015. "Agglomeration Economies and Productivity Growth: U.S. Cities, 1880-1930," Studies in Economics 1514, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    5. Scott Stern & Michael E. Porter & Jeffrey L. Furman, 2000. "The Determinants of National Innovative Capacity," NBER Working Papers 7876, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Joshua Drucker, 2009. "Trends in Regional Industrial Concentration in the United States," Working Papers 09-06, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Junius, Karsten, 1997. "Economies of scale: A survey of the empirical literature," Kiel Working Papers 813, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. John M. Quigley, 1998. "Urban Diversity and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 127-138, Spring.
    9. Somik V. Lall & Elizabeth Schroeder & Emily Schmidt, 2014. "Identifying Spatial Efficiency-Equity Trade-offs in Territorial Development Policies: Evidence from Uganda," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(12), pages 1717-1733, December.
    10. Lall, Somik V.*Jun Koo*Chakravorty, Sanjoy, 2003. "Diversity matters - the economic geography of industry location in India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3072, The World Bank.
    11. van Oort, Frank & Gerking, Shelby & van Soest, Daan, 2000. "A Spatial Analysis Of Endogenous Growth In Industry And Services In The Netherlands," ERSA conference papers ersa00p195, European Regional Science Association.
    12. Ren Lu & Ruikan Zhang & Torger Reve, 2013. "Relations among Clusters in Six Chinese City Regions," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(8), pages 1189-1209, August.
    13. Lall, Somik V. & Funderburg, Richard & Yepes, Tito, 2003. "Location, concentration, and performance of economic activity in Brazil," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3268, The World Bank.
    14. World Bank, 2004. "India : Investment Climate and Manufacturing Industry," World Bank Publications - Reports 14378, The World Bank Group.
    15. Simon, Curtis J. & Nardinelli, Clark, 2002. "Human capital and the rise of American cities, 1900-1990," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 59-96, January.
    16. Combes, Pierre-Philippe, 2000. "Economic Structure and Local Growth: France, 1984-1993," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 329-355, May.
    17. Muhammad Asif Qureshi & Jawaid Ahmed Qureshi & Ammar Ahmed & Shahzad Qaiser & Ramsha Ali & Arshian Sharif, 2020. "The Dynamic Relationship Between Technology Innovation and Human Development in Technologically Advanced Countries: Fresh Insights from Quantiles-on-Quantile Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(2), pages 555-580, November.
    18. Raphael Bostic, 2002. "Do CRA Agreements Influence Lending Patterns?," Working Paper 8623, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rebecca Bradley & Joshua S. Gans, 1998. "Growth in Australian Cities," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 74(226), pages 266-278, September.
    2. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissensintensive Unternehmensdienste, Wissens-Spillovers und regionales Wachstum. Teilprojekt 1: Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung – Welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert das Wach," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58342, February.
    3. Thomas Doring & Jan Schnellenbach, 2006. "What do we know about geographical knowledge spillovers and regional growth?: A survey of the literature," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(3), pages 375-395.
    4. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung - welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert des Wachstum?," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 144, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    5. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Mehmet Ugur & Siew Ling Yew, 2017. "Does Government Size Affect Per-Capita Income Growth? A Hierarchical Meta-Regression Analysis," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 93(300), pages 142-171, March.
    6. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2000. "Diversity and Specialisation in Cities: Why, Where and When Does it Matter?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 37(3), pages 533-555, March.
    7. Engen, Eric M. & Skinner, Jonathan, 1996. "Taxation and Economic Growth," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 49(4), pages 617-642, December.
    8. Fafchamps, Marcel, 1997. "Mobile Capital, Local Externalities, and Industrialization," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 345-365, December.
    9. Chua, Hak B., 1993. "Regional Spillovers and Economic Growth," Center Discussion Papers 321327, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    10. Hajamini, Mehdi & Falahi, Mohammad Ali, 2018. "Economic growth and government size in developed European countries: A panel threshold approach," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-13.
    11. Levine, Ross & Renelt, David, 1991. "Cross-country studies of growth and policy : methodological, conceptual, and statistical problems," Policy Research Working Paper Series 608, The World Bank.
    12. Andrew Bernard & Márcio Gomes Pinto Garcia, 1997. "Public and private provision of infrastructure and economic development," Textos para discussão 375, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    13. Kwack, Sung Yeung & Lee, Young Sun, 2006. "Analyzing the Korea's growth experience: The application of R&D and human capital based growth models with demography," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 818-831, November.
    14. Edward L. Glaeser & Joshua D. Gottlieb, 2009. "The Wealth of Cities: Agglomeration Economies and Spatial Equilibrium in the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 983-1028, December.
    15. Roger Bivand & Jon M. Steineke, 1998. "Dynamic externalities and regional manufacturing development: An exploration of the Polish experience before and after 1989," ERSA conference papers ersa98p271, European Regional Science Association.
    16. Döring, Thomas, 2005. "Räumliche Externalitäten von Wissen und ihre Konsequenzen für die Ausgestaltung des Finanzausgleichs," Forschungs- und Sitzungsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Färber, Gisela (ed.), Das föderative System in Deutschland: Bestandsaufnahme, Reformbedarf und Handlungsempfehlungen aus raumwissenschaftlicher Sicht, volume 127, pages 93-120, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    17. Bernard Gauthier & Alain Lapointe & Frédéric Laurin, 2001. "Les déterminants de la croissance régionale et l’intégration Européenne : 1986-1995," Cahiers de recherche 01-06, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
    18. Alejandro Díaz-Bautista, 2004. "Los determinantes del crecimiento económico. Comercio internacional, convergencia y las instituciones," Macroeconomics 0403001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Argentino Pessoa, 2014. "Agglomeration and regional growth policy: externalities versus comparative advantages," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 53(1), pages 1-27, August.
    20. Cardenas, Mauricio & Ponton, Adriana, 1995. "Growth and convergence in Colombia: 1950-1990," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 5-37, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:41:y:1997:i:1:p:38-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.