RAILROADS AND GROWTH IN PRUSSIA

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hornung, Erik
• 署名单位: Max Planck Society
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1111/jeea.12123
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 699-736
• 关键词: economic-growth; urbanization; TRADE; population; IMPACT

摘要

We study the effect of railroad access on urban population growth. Using GIS techniques, we match triennial population data for roughly 1,000 cities in 19th-century Prussia to georeferenced maps of the German railroad network. We find positive short- and long-term effects of having a station on urban growth for different periods during 1840-1871. Causal effects of (potentially endogenous) railroad access on city growth are identified using propensity score matching, instrumental variables, and fixed-effects estimation techniques. Our instrument identifies exogenous variation in railroad access by constructing straight-line corridors between nodes. Counterfactual models using pre-railroad growth yield no evidence to support the hypothesis that railroads appeared as a consequence of a previous growth spurt.