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Mean Reversion of the German City System After the WWII Bombing of Cities: What Is the Mean?

Author

Listed:
  • Duc A. Nguyen
  • Steven Brakman
  • Harry Garretsen
  • Tristan Kohl

Abstract

We study the post-war effects of the bombing of German cities during WWII on urban growth and use the synthetic control method (SCM) to construct comparison units for affected West-German cities. The reason to use SCM is that cities might experience structural changes that have nothing to do with the bombing of cities. Ignoring these structural changes could incorrectly attribute the decline of cities to the WWII bombing shock, while other factors are at work. The SCM takes these structural changes onboard. The synthetic units are used as counterfactuals to assess the long-run impact following the WWII bombing on the size distribution of 53 West-German cities. Our main contribution is that we do not only study whether bombed cities are mean-reverting, but also use the counterfactual to determine whether individual cities experienced a positive or negative impact. In general, we find mean reversion for 50-70% of cities, as well as a roughly balanced ratio of positively to negatively impacted cities.

Suggested Citation

  • Duc A. Nguyen & Steven Brakman & Harry Garretsen & Tristan Kohl, 2024. "Mean Reversion of the German City System After the WWII Bombing of Cities: What Is the Mean?," CESifo Working Paper Series 11423, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11423
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    urban growth; synthetic control method; WWII shock; city size distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General

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