Paving the way to modern growth. Evidence from Bourbon roads in Spain

Miquel-Àngel Garcia-López, Alfonso Herranz-Loncán, Filippo Tassinari and Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal

No 209, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

Abstract: This paper analyses the impact that Spanish road construction had on local population growth between 1787 and 1857. We find that the increase in market access associated to road accessibility had a substantial effect on local population growth. The impact was substantially higher on the municipalities that were connected earlier and that had a more diversified occupational structure. By contrast, the effect of the new network on population growth was negative in municipalities close but without direct access to the roads. We interpret these findings as evidence of a process of rural-to-rural migration due to the new roads.

Keywords: roads; accessibility; market access; population growth; pre-railway transport; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 N73 N93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_209.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:hes:wpaper:0209

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paul Sharp ().