Essays on economic geography and urban economics

Abstract

This doctoral thesis takes Urban Economics and the New Economic Geography as its references to study three important issues in these two disciplines. First, we analyze the influence of a strong temporary shock, namely, the U.S. Civil War, on the relative size of its cities and their growth. Second, we carry out an empirical study of the size distribution of cities to determine which statistical distribution best fits the data, the novelty being that it takes into account both their temporal and geographic dimension. Third, and finally, we propose a theoretical model that allows us to determine the effect of incorporating the service sector, especially services that act as an intermediate input for manufacturing, into the industrial economic landscape.