The economic dynamics of city structure: Evidence from Hiroshima's recovery

Kohei Takeda and Atsushi Yamagishi

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: We provide new theory and evidence on the resilience of internal city structure after a large shock, analyzing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Exploiting newly digitized data, we document that the city structure recovered within five years after the bombing. Our new dynamic quantitative model of internal city structure incorporates commuting, forward-looking location choices, migration frictions, agglomeration forces, and heterogeneous location fundamentals. Strong agglomeration forces in our estimated model explain Hiroshima's recovery, and we find an alternative equilibrium where the city center did not recover. These results highlight the role of agglomeration forces, multiple equilibria, and expectations in urban dynamics.

Keywords: agglomeration; history; expectations; atomic bombing; spatial dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-04-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1988.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The economic dynamics of city structure: evidence from Hiroshima's recovery (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1988

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().