Modern Library Holdings and Historic City Growth

Eric Chaney

No 14686, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper uses more than 30 million records from the union of the world’s largest library collections to provide a novel proxy for historic economic activity. Changes in the number of authors affiliated with a city strongly correlate with existing population growth estimates. An empirical Bayes approach exploits this correlation to improve upon current data and provide new growth estimates where none exist. The paper concludes by using the new data to revisit urban growth during the rise of the Atlantic trade.

Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro and nep-his
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