Economist References Joshua Graff Zivin Study on Academic Citations
Concrete gains
10/11/2012
The Economist
America is full of vast, empty spaces. Europe, by contrast, seems chock-a-block with humanity, its history shaped by a lack of continental elbowroom. Ironically, Europe’s congestion partly reflects the fact that its large cities suck up relatively few people. Although America and the euro zone have similar total populations, America’s 50 largest metropolitan areas are home to 164m people, compared with just 102m in the euro area. This striking disparity has big consequences.
Differences in metropolitan populations may help explain gaps in productivity and incomes. Western Europe’s per-person GDP is 72% of America’s, on a purchasing-power-parity basis. A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, the consultancy’s research arm, reckons that some three-quarters of this gap can be chalked up to Europe’s relatively diminutive cities. More Americans than Europeans live in big cities: there is a particular divergence in the size of each region’s “middleweight” cities, those that teem just a little less than the likes of New York and Paris (see chart). And the premium earned by Americans in large cities relative to those in the countryside is larger than that earned by urban Europeans.
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Joshua Graff Zivin is Associate Professor of International Relations and Pacific Studies and Affiliated Faculty of Economics. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Research Director for International Environmental and Health Studies at the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).
