OECD Regional Development Working Papers
- Discontinued
- Is continued by :
- OECD Regional Development Papers
Working papers from the Regional Development Policy Division of the OECD cover a full range of topics including regional statistics and analysis, urban governance and economics, rural governance and economics, and multi-level governance. Depending on the programme of work, the papers can cover specific topics such as regional innovation and networks, the determinants of regional growth or fiscal consolidation at the sub-national level.
- ISSN: 20737009 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/20737009
Does Regional Economic Growth Depend on Proximity to Urban Centres?
This paper analyses the spatial patterns of regional economic growth in Europe over the 1995 to 2010 period. It finds that regions, which contain large urban agglomerations, have been growing significantly faster than those that do not. Furthermore, proximity to large urban agglomerations has been positively correlated to economic growth. Halving travel time to a large urban agglomeration is associated with a 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points increase in annual per capita growth. More generally, the study also shows that measures of population density are positively correlated to growth. Among the different measures, by far the best predictor of growth between 1995 and 2010 is the maximum population density of a region.
Keywords: spatial distribution of economic activity, population distribution and economic growth, regional growth
JEL:
R11: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / General Regional Economics / Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes;
R12: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / General Regional Economics / Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity
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