Identifying Agglomeration Shadows: Long-run Evidence from Ancient Ports

Richard Hornbeck, Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch

No 32634, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine “agglomeration shadows” that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and “wave interference” that we show in simulations. We use the locations of ancient ports near the Mediterranean, which seeded modern cities, to estimate agglomeration shadows cast on nearby areas. We find that empirically, as in the simulations, detectable agglomeration shadows emerge for large cities around ancient ports. These patterns extend to modern city locations more generally, and illustrate how encouraging growth in particular places can discourage growth of nearby areas.

JEL-codes: N9 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-his and nep-ure
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Related works:
Working Paper: Identifying Agglomeration Shadows: Long-run Evidence from Ancient Ports (2024)
Working Paper: Identifying agglomeration shadows: Long-run evidence from ancient ports (2024)
Working Paper: Identifying Agglomeration Shadows: Long-Run Evidence from Ancient Ports (2024)
Working Paper: Identifying Agglomeration Shadows: Long-run Evidence from Ancient Ports (2024)
Working Paper: Identifying agglomeration shadows: long-run evidence from ancient ports (2024)
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