The Impact of the Spatial Population Distribution on Economic Growth

Constantin Bürgi and Nisan Gorgulu ()
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Nisan Gorgulu: Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Postal: Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics, Porcelaenshaven 16 A. 1. floor, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark

No 17-2021, Working Papers from Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics

Abstract: We look at the spatial angle of economic growth. Specifically, we assess whether areas where people live closer together experience faster growth. Traditional measures like population density or urbanization are not optimal, as they are affected by large uninhabited areas or capped, respectively. We thus introduce a new measure Spatial Population Concentration (SPC) that captures how many people live on average within a given radius of every person within a geographic area. This measure allows for a more accurate measurement of the population concentration than traditional measures, as it does not share some of their short comings. Next, we show for U.S. counties that areas with a high spatial population concentration experience faster growth. We find that counties with a low value of SPC measure in 1990 experienced substantially lower GDP growth over the next 25 years.

Keywords: spatial population concentration; endogeneous growth; spillover; the United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O47 O51 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2021-11-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-gro and nep-ure
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