Military Conflict and the Rise of Urban Europe

Massimiliano Onorato will present new evidence  about the relationship between military conflict and city population growth in Europe from the fall of Charlemagne's empire to the start of the Industrial Revolution. Military conflict was a main feature of European history. He and his co-author Mark Dincecco (University of Michigan) argue that cities were safe harbors from conflict threats.  To test this argument, they constructed a novel database that geocodes the locations of 1,091 conflicts and 676 cities between 800 and 1799.  They found a significant, positive, and robust relationship that runs from conflict exposure to city population growth.  Their analysis suggests that military conflict played a key role in the rise of urban Europe.

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Massimiliano G. Onorato is an Assistant Professor in Economics and Institutional Change at IMT Lucca, Italy. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Economics in 2010 at Bocconi University in Milan. Prior to his appointment at IMT Lucca, he was a Post Doctoral Associate at the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. His research interests include Political Economy, Comparative Politics and Economic History.

Co-sponsored by Comparative Politics.