National Borders and Urban Growth: Evidence from the Annexation of Alsace and Lorraine

Iakov Kuga

HSE Working papers from National Research University Higher School of Economics

Abstract: According to the Treaty of Frankfurt (1871) France lost Alsace and Lorraine. In the paper I estimate how the new border affected a growth of nearby towns. Applying difference-in-differences methodology to census data for 1831-1911, I obtain paradoxical result. The new border boosted the growth of nearby towns. Extra urban growth in a 70 km border region reached 4.23 per cent p.a. in 1872-6, and was smaller, but still significantly positive, later. Point estimate of the total border effect in 1872-1911 is 134 per cent. This effect survives in more homogeneous subsamples and is robust to a number of specification changes. Both immigration of Alsatians, garrison growth and fort construction have sizable and significant positive effect on urban growth; however, the border effect remains significantly positive after accounting for these factors

Keywords: market potential; population; France; Alsace; Lorraine; difference-in-differences. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 N93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int, nep-pke and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in WP BRP Series: Economics / EC, April 2016, pages 1-34

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.hse.ru/data/2016/04/19/1129446026/133EC2016.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:hig:wpaper:133/ec/2016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HSE Working papers from National Research University Higher School of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Shamil Abdulaev () and Shamil Abdulaev ().