A Century of Shocks: The Evolution of the German City Size Distribution 1925-1999

By Maarten Bosker, S. Brakman, H. Garretsen, Marc Schramm. Social Science Research Network, 2008

244 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The empirical literature on city size distributions has mainly focused on the USA. The first major contribution of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the evolution and structure of the West-German city size distribution. Using a unique annual data set that covers most of the 20th century for 62 of West-Germany's largest cities, we look at the evolution of both the city size distribution as a whole and each city separately. The West-German case is of particular interest as it has undergone major shocks, most notably WWII. Our data set allows us to identify these shocks and provide evidence on the effects of these `quasi-natural experiments' on the city size distribution. The second major contribution of this paper is that we perform unit-root tests on individual German city sizes using a substantial number of observations to analyze the evolution of the individual cities that make up the German city size distribution. Our main findings are twofold. First, WWII has had a major and lasting impact on the city size distribution. Second, the overall city size distribution does not adhere to Zipf's Law. This second finding is largely based on the results of unit root tests for individual cities to test for Gibrat's Law, the latter being a requirement for Zipf's Law to hold for the overall city-size distribution. Together these two findings are consistent with theories emphasizing increasing returns to scale in city growth.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0276da3539145f1a2b0488aaa24a21b9000900e6

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Citations in the corpus

Regional Resilience in Italy: A Very Long-Run Analysis (2014, result): “…on regional GDP dynamics: just six episodes over nearly 120 years included two shocks related to the World Wars.6 It is worth pointing out how these results are consistent with the argument that wars – as a shock – could be very different from other types of shocks (BOSKER et al., 2007, 2008).”
The empirics of new economic geography (2010, unknown): “…(2002)’s preferred interpretation of their empirical findings for Japan is that they provide support for a hybrid theory, in which 13In contrast, Bosker et al. (2007, 2008) find some evidence of a permanent effect of the Second World War on the spatial distribution of economic activity within…”
Growth in a Cross-section of Cities: Location, Increasing Returns or Random Growth? (2015, unknown): “Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 15th International Conference on Macroeconomic Analysis and International Finance (Crete, 2011), at the 65th European Meeting of the Econometric Society (Oslo, 2011), at the 58th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association I”
City Seeds. Geography and the Origins of the European City System (2017, unknown): “See also De Vries (1984), Findlay and O’Rourke (2007) or Bosker et al. (2012). Europe thus defined comprises current-day Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, Spa”
History, Path Dependence and Development: Evidence from Colonial Railroads, Settlers and Cities in Kenya (2017, unknown): “These studies, and others (Bosker et al., 2008; Bleakley & Lin, 2012; Michaels & Rauch, 2013; Ahlfeldt et al., 2014; ?)”
Zipf's Law for Cities in the Regions and the Country (2011, unknown): “These findings should be set into perspective to Bosker et al. (2008), who address the stability of the German city size distribution over a longer time period (1925-1999).”
Sequential city growth in the us: does age matter? (2013, unknown): “Bosker et al. (2008), drawing on data for cities in West Germany with more than 50,000 inhabitants, show that Gibrat’s law can be rejected and that, therefore, growth is not random.”
What is Different About Urbanization in Rich and Poor Countries? Cities in Brazil, China, India and the United States (2017, unknown): “in recent decades, it does not appear to hold well in Germany (Bosker et al., 2008) or for the U.”
From Periphery to Core: Economic Adjustments to High Speed Rail (2010, background): “…regional economic policy by means of transport infrastructure investment in the realm of the existing theories and evidence on city growth (see e.g. BOSKER et al., 2008; DAVIS & WEINSTEIN, 2002).5 The literature suggests that even large temporary shocks such as the allied strategic bombing during…”
Looking for Multiple Equilibria When Geography Matters: German City Growth and the Wwii Shock (2005, methodology): “[2] we apply panel unit root tests on annual German city population data that cover (almost) the whole 20th century.”