From Baghdad to London: Unraveling Urban Development in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, 800–1800

Maarten Bosker, Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden
Additional contact information
Eltjo Buringh: Utrecht University

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2013, vol. 95, issue 4, 1418-1437

Abstract: This paper empirically investigates why, between 800 and 1800, the urban center of gravity moved from the Islamic world to Europe. Using a large new city-specific data set covering Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, we unravel the role of geography and institutions in determining long-run city development in the two regions. We find that the main reasons for the Islamic world's stagnation and Europe's long-term success are specific to each region: any significant positive interaction between cities in the two regions hampered by their different main religious orientation. Together, the long-term consequences of a different choice of main transport mode (camel versus ship) and the development of forms of local participative government in Europe that made cities less dependent on the state explain why Europe's urban development eventually outpaced that in the Islamic world. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: economic history; long term urban development; Europe; Islamic world (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N10 N90 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (101)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00284 link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:4:p:1418-1437

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().