The largest cities in the world today lie mainly in relatively poor countries, which is a departure from historical experience, when the largest cities were typically found in the richest places. Using new data on the demographic history of the 100 largest mega-cities of today, we establish...

The world is becoming more and more urbanized at every income level, and there has been a dramatic increase in the number of mega-cities in the developing world. This has led scholars to believe that development and urbanization are not always correlated, either across space or over time. In...

Many theories link urbanization with industrialization; in partic- ular, with the production of tradable (and typically manufactured) goods. We document that the expected relationship between urbanization and the levelofindustrializationisnotpresentinasampleofdevelopingeconomies. The breakdown...

What is the impact of modern transportation technology on economic change in poor countries? Rail construction in colonial Africa provides a natu-ral experiment. Using new data on railroads and cities over one century within one country, Ghana, and Africa as a whole, we ï¬nd large permanent...

Little is known about the extent and forces of urban path dependence in developing countries. Railroad construction incolonialKenyaprovidesanaturalexperimenttostudytheemer- gence and persistence of this spatial equilibrium. Using new data...

Standard models explain urbanization by rural-urban migration in response to an (expected) urban-rural wage gap. The Green Revolution and rural poverty constitute rural push factors of migration. The Indus- trial Revolution and the urban bias are urban pull factors. This paper offers an...