This paper reconsiders the evolution of the growth of American cities since 1790 in light of new theories of urban growth. Our null hypothesis for long-term growth is random growth. We obtain evidence supporting random growth against the alternative of mean reversion (convergence) in city sizes...

India is at the cusp of a major urban transition. In less than twenty years, India's urban population is expected to nearly double from 377 million today to over 600 million. Indian cities already contribute an estimated two-thirds of India's GDP, and this number is expected to rise to 75% by...

Since 1980, economic growth in the U.S. has been fastest in its largest cities. We show that a group of skill- and information-intensive service industries are responsible for all of this new urban bias in recent growth. We then propose a simple explanation centered around the interaction of...

This paper analyses the determinants of growth of American cities, understood as growth of the population or of per capita income, from 1990 to 2000. This empirical analysis uses data from all cities with more than 25,000 inhabitants in the year 2000 (1154 cities). The results show that while a...

There is a large literature on the existence of agglomeration economies, as shown in the surveys by Moomaw (1983) or Gerking (1993). The benefits of these economies arise from multiple sources, but some negative externalities might also emerge. Within the hierarchical urban system, cities at...

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...

Using two comprehensive datasets on population of cities (1800-2000) and metropolitan areas (1960-2000) for a large set of countries, I present three new empirical facts about the evolution of city growth. First, the distribution of cities growth rates is skewed to the right in most countries...

This paper examines what regional characteristics drove urban economic growth in Europe during the past decade. Possible impacts on the new member states in Central Europe due to expansion of the European Union are accounted for by comparison between two periods, before and after 2004. With a...

Since 1980, US wage growth has been fastest in large cities. Empirically, we show that most of this urban-biased growth reflects wage growth at large Business Services firms, which are also the most intensive users of information and communications technology (ICT) capital in the US economy. We...

We provide empirical evidence of the dynamics of city size distribution for the whole of the twentieth century in U.S. cities and metropolitan areas. We focus our analysis on the new cities that were created during the period of analysis. The main contribution of this paper, therefore, is the...