The Costs of Remoteness: Evidence from German Division and Reunification

Stephen Redding and Daniel Sturm

American Economic Review, 2008, vol. 98, issue 5, 1766-97

Abstract: This paper exploits the division of Germany after the Second World War and the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990 as a natural experiment to provide evidence for the importance of market access for economic development. In line with a standard new economic geography model, we find that, following division, cities in West Germany close to the East-West German border experienced a substantial decline in population growth relative to other West German cities. We show that the model can account for the quantitative magnitude of our findings and provide additional evidence against alternative possible explanations. (JEL F15, N94, R12, R23)

JEL-codes: N94 R12 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.5.1766
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (567)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.98.5.1766 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/dec08/20050315_data.zip (application/zip)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/dec08/20050315_app.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Costs of Remoteness: Evidence from German Division and Reunification (2006)
Working Paper: The Costs of Remoteness: Evidence from German Division and Reunification (2005)
Working Paper: The Costs of Remoteness: Evidence from German Division and Reunification (2005)
Working Paper: The Costs of Remoteness: Evidence from German Division and Reunification (2005)
Working Paper: The costs of remoteness: evidence from German division and reunification (2005)
Working Paper: The costs of remoteness: evidence from German division and reunification (2005)
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:aea:aecrev:v:98:y:2008:i:5:p:1766-97

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().