Resumen de Growth in a Cross-Section of Cities : Location, Increasing Returns or Random Growth?

Rafael González Val, José Olmo

• This article analyzes empirically the main existing theories on income and population city growth: increasing returns to scale, locational fundamentals and random growth. To do this we implement a threshold nonlinearity test that extends standard linear growth regression models to a dataset on urban, climatological and macroeconomic variables on 1,175 U. S. cities. Our analysis reveals the existence of increasing returns when per-capita income levels are beyond.