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...

Several studies have documented a negative relationship between democracy and volatility. The latter is usually measured at high frequency - as the standard deviation of annual GDP growth rates. On the other hand, growth researchers have recently focused on the medium term and documented...

This paper studies the effect of the Spanish Reconquest, a military campaign that aimed to expel the Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, on the population of its most important cities. The almost four centuries of Reconquest offer a "quasi-natural" experiment to study the persistence of...

This paper uses aggregate data from the International Labor Organization and microeconomic data from the European Values Study to quantify gender gaps in entrepreneurship, distinguishing between gender gaps in employership and in self‐employment, and study their main empirical determinants....

In this paper we use data on Spanish cities between 2006 and 2015 to study the Spanish urban system applying the model in Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg (2013). We decompose the determinants of the Spanish city size distribution into three main components: efficiency, amenities, and frictions. In the...

In this paper we use data on Spanish cities between 2006 and 2015 to study the Spanish urban system applying the model in Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg (2013). We decompose the determinants of the Spanish city size distribution into three main components: efficiency, amenities, and frictions. In the...