Does railway accessibility boost population growth? Evidence from unfinished historical roadways in France

Eliakim Kakpo, Julie Le Gallo, Camille Grivault and Marie Breuillé

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The railway revolution that swayed through Europe in the nineteenth century left a legacy of unexplored networks. In this paper, we observe a subset of unfinished railways to evaluate the impact of railroads on population growth. Using the random nature of the achieved portions, we compare municipalities located around the planned but not realized segment of the railways to those in the vicinity of the operated sections. Our results indicate that the railways boost population growth in the medium and long-run. However, the medium-run effects are only visible in municipalities with high pre-arrival population. The railroads also seem to have solved a coordination problem in the sense that treated municipalities were more likely to gain access to other transport infrastructures later.

Keywords: Urbanization; population growth; development; railways; transport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N44 O18 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his, nep-tre and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:96743

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