Urbanisation, Urban Concentration and Economic Development

The paper investigates how urban primacy affects economic growth across countries. Using semi-parametric estimation techniques on a cross-country panel for the years 1960—90, an increasing relationship is unearthed between urban primacy and growth. This result holds even when limiting the sample to the developing country group, thus moderating previous findings on the existence of an optimal level of urban primacy, by suggesting that if such an optimal level exists, the range of values of urban primacy for which it is reached is fairly wide.