Which comes first – urbanization or economic growth? Evidence from heterogeneous panel causality tests

Heterogeneous panel causality tests are employed to consider the relationship between urbanization change and economic growth. Urbanization causes economic growth in high-income countries, but noncausality could not be rejected for both middle-income and Latin American countries. A bi-directional, equilibrium relationship is observed for low-income, predominately African countries where economic growth has a positive, causal effect on urbanization, but where urbanization has a negative, causal effect on economic growth. Hence, urbanization and economic growth either co-evolve in low-income/African and high-income countries, or else the two processes are decoupled for middle-income and Latin American countries.