Trade and Cities

Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of the t...

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Main Authors:	Karayalcin, Cem, Yilmazkuday, Hakan
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2017
Subjects:	INTERNATIONAL TRADE URBANIZATION URBAN CONCENTRATION CONGESTION TRADE POLICY
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27686

id	okr-10986-27686
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-276862021-04-23T14:04:46Z Trade and Cities Karayalcin, Cem Yilmazkuday, Hakan INTERNATIONAL TRADE URBANIZATION URBAN CONCENTRATION CONGESTION TRADE POLICY Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of the theoretical literature suggests that such high levels of concentration may be the result of restrictive trade policies that trigger forces of agglomeration. Another strand of the literature, however, points out that trade liberalization itself may exacerbate urban concentration by favoring the further growth of those large urban centers that have better access to international markets. The empirical basis for judging this question has been weak so far; in the existing literature, trade policies are poorly measured (or are not measured, as when trade volumes are used spuriously). Here, we use new disaggregated tariff measures to empirically test the hypothesis. We also employ a treatment-and-control analysis of pre- versus post-liberalization performance of the cities in liberalizing and non-liberalizing countries. We find evidence that (controlling for the largest cities that have ports and, thus, have better access to external markets) liberalizing trade leads to a reduction in urban concentration. 2017-08-09T17:17:00Z 2017-08-09T17:17:00Z 2015-09-29 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27686 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	INTERNATIONAL TRADE URBANIZATION URBAN CONCENTRATION CONGESTION TRADE POLICY
spellingShingle	INTERNATIONAL TRADE URBANIZATION URBAN CONCENTRATION CONGESTION TRADE POLICY Karayalcin, Cem Yilmazkuday, Hakan Trade and Cities
description	Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of the theoretical literature suggests that such high levels of concentration may be the result of restrictive trade policies that trigger forces of agglomeration. Another strand of the literature, however, points out that trade liberalization itself may exacerbate urban concentration by favoring the further growth of those large urban centers that have better access to international markets. The empirical basis for judging this question has been weak so far; in the existing literature, trade policies are poorly measured (or are not measured, as when trade volumes are used spuriously). Here, we use new disaggregated tariff measures to empirically test the hypothesis. We also employ a treatment-and-control analysis of pre- versus post-liberalization performance of the cities in liberalizing and non-liberalizing countries. We find evidence that (controlling for the largest cities that have ports and, thus, have better access to external markets) liberalizing trade leads to a reduction in urban concentration.
format	Journal Article
author	Karayalcin, Cem Yilmazkuday, Hakan
author_facet	Karayalcin, Cem Yilmazkuday, Hakan
author_sort	Karayalcin, Cem
title	Trade and Cities
title_short	Trade and Cities
title_full	Trade and Cities
title_fullStr	Trade and Cities
title_full_unstemmed	Trade and Cities
title_sort	trade and cities
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2017
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27686
_version_	1764465890251767808

Trade and Cities

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