Measuring Urban Economic Density

Henderson, J. Vernon ; Nigmatulina, Dzhamilya ; Kriticos, Sebastian

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: URBANIZATION;    URBAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT;    POPULATION DENSITY;    AGGLOMERATION;    SCALE ECONOMIES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8678
RP-ID  :  WPS8678

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Agglomeration economies are at the heartof urban economics, driving the existence and extent ofcities and are central to structural transformation and theurbanization process. This paper evaluates the use ofdifferent measures of economic density in assessing urbanagglomeration effects, by examining how well they explainhousehold income differences across cities and neighborhoodsin six African countries. The paper examines simple scaleand density measures and more nuanced ones that capture theextent of clustering within cities. The evidence suggeststhat more nuanced measures attempting to capture within-citydifferences in the extent of clustering do no better than asimple density measure in explaining income differencesacross cities, at least for the current degree of accuracyin measuring clustering. However, simple city scalemeasures, such as total population, are inferior to densitymeasures and to some degree misleading. The analysis findslarge household income premiums from being in bigger andparticularly denser cities over rural areas in Africa,indicating that migration pull forces remain very strong inthe structural transformation process. Moreover, themarginal effects of increases in urban density on householdincome are very large, with density elasticities of 0.6. Inaddition to strong city-level density effects, the analysisfinds strong neighborhood effects. For household incomes,overall city density and density of the neighborhood matter.