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Home | Events | The Death and Life of Great British Cities
Seminar

The Death and Life of Great British Cities

  • Series
    Spatial Economics Seminar
  • Speaker(s)
    David Nagy (CREI, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona School of Economics, Spain)
  • Field
    Spatial Economics
  • Location
    Tinbergen Institute, room 1.01
    Amsterdam
  • Date and time

    October 02, 2025
    12:00 - 13:00

Abstract
Does industrial concentration shape the life and death of cities? We identify settlements from historical maps of England and Wales (1790–1820), isolate exogenous variation in their late 19th-century size and industrial concentration, and estimate the causal impact of size and concentration on later dynamics. Industrial concentration has a negative effect on long-run productivity—independent of industry trends and consistent with cross-industry Jacobs externalities. A spatial model quantifies the role of fundamentals, industry trends, and Jacobs externalities in shaping industry-city dynamics and isolates a new, dynamic trade-off in the design of placebased policies. Joint paper with Stephan Heblich, Dávid Krisztián Nagy, Alex Trew, and Yanos Zylberberg.