1. Railways and Cities in India with James Fenske and Namrata Kala
2023, Journal of Development Economics
VoxDev: How railways impact the growth of cities: Evidence from colonial India
Abstract: Using a new dataset on city populations in colonial India, we show that the railroad network increased city size in the period 1881 to 1931. Our baseline estimation approach includes fixed effects for city and year, and we construct instrumental variables for railroad proximity based on distance from a least cost path spanning cities that existed prior to the start of railroad construction. Cities that increased market access due to the railroad grew. The small and heterogeneous effects we find are driven largely by cities that were initially small and isolated.
Presented at: The Quantitative History Webinar Series (2021, Virtual, Video)
Data on Indian railways and urban population can be found at Data@James Fenske