【量化历史网上讲座系列】(Quantitative History Webinar Series)由香港大学陈志武教授和马驰骋博士联合发起并举办，旨在介绍前沿量化历史研究成果、促进同仁交流，推广量化方法在历史研究中的应用。本系列讲座由国际量化历史学会、香港大学经济管理学院和亚洲环球研究所全力支持和承办。

第46场讲座信息

Railways and Cities in India

主讲人: Jinlin Wei, PhD candidate from Warwick Department of Economics, will present his co-authored paper: “Railways and Cities in India”

时间：2021年9月16日 16:00 - 17:30 （北京时间，星期四）

讲座语言：英文

讲座介绍

Jinlin Wei of University of Warwick and his co-authors examine how railways affected urban population in India between 1881 and 1931. The construction of railways in India started in 1853 and there were already more than 40,000 miles of railways in India by 1931. The expansion of railways in India increased urban population in cities during this period.

In order to identify the causal impact of proximity to railways, they construct an instrumental variable based on least cost paths that connect pre-existing cities in India before railway construction started. The least cost paths were constructed based on terrain slopes between city pairs that have high market potential. Using changes over time in how proximity to these paths predict proximity to railways, they find that urban population in Indian cities increased as railways expanded, and cities achieved better access to railways.

To investigate the mechanisms that drive the increase in urban population, they construct measures of market access – a concept that links transportation costs to population. They find that city size increased in response to better access to railways, as cities had lower transportation costs to other cities and better market access after receiving railways. The effects are larger for initially small, isolated cities that did not have alternative transportation routes such as ports and rivers.

In this Quantitative History Webinar, Jinlin Wei will explain how better access to railways increased urban populations via the channel of market access.

Jinlin's co-authors: James Fenske (Warwick) and Namrata Kala (MIT)