In the presence of scale economies, industries are incentivized to localize production. Geography is key in determining where that localization happens. The Home Market Effect (HME) predicts that locations with the largest demand are the host. Yet, since its origin by Krugman (1980), the...

We explore the long run socio-economic impact of a medieval urban governance setting , the king-owned towns (KOTs). For a town the KOT status implies special fiscal, commercial and administrative prerogatives between the community and the Crown, where such as status could be renovated, modified...

Place names, or toponyms, provide insight into the initial geographical characteristics of settlements. We present a unique dataset of 3,705 German toponyms that includes the date of the first historical record mentioning the settlement and the date it was granted city rights. We show that the...