lecture 3 economy and the great divergence

Question 1

What is urban economy?

Answer 1

The production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods and service within the urban society

Question 2

What are important links between urbanization and the economy?

Answer 2

• Cities have important functions
• Urban economy attracts people
• Urban economies drives of economic developments and wealth
• Urban growth results from urban economic growth and vice versa

Question 3

What are the two means of obtaining power in early cities?

Answer 3

1. Appropriation of agricultural surpluses
2. Long distance trade

Question 4

What are the three important theories on societal collaps?

Answer 4

• Environmental conditions
• Moral decay and outside attacks
• Social theory: elite competition

Question 5

What important changes are there in urbanization?

Answer 5

• Rise of industrial capitalism
• Improvement of living standards in industrialized areas
• Huge population growth from the end of the 18th century

Question 6

When does urban growth stop according to Davis S curve?

Answer 6

• Sustaining population
• Developed countires will shift to suburbanization and peripheral development

Question 7

Why do we have to focus on Europe and China in the great divergence?

Answer 7

1. They are equally advanced economies
2. Parallel growth in commerce, population and agricultural productivity

Question 8

Economic power: agricultural surplus

Answer 8

• Wealth of early cities provided by surplus of farmers
• Taxation by urban rules
• Forced labor
• Cities provide services in exchange (ex, protection, administration, religious services)

Question 9

Economic power: long-distance trade

Answer 9

• Rulers in cities aimed at increasing prestige → accumulation of prestige goods
• Long-distance trade: import of raw materials and luxury products (artisans producing)

Question 10

What is the result of early urban economies fragility?

Answer 10

Most early urban economies collapsed

Question 11

Early urban economies fragile

Answer 11

1. Dependence on extraction of rural resouces
2. Coercion could lead to resistance
3. Prestige economy: problems with legitimacy

Question 12

Link between urbanization and big cities and sustained growth not clear (1300-1800)

Answer 12

• Differences between regions
• Ability to attract surplus from agriculture differs per city

Question 13

What is a producer city?

Answer 13

The productions and exchange of goods and commercial service with the city’s hinterland and other cities

Question 14

What is a consumer city?

Answer 14

A centre of government and military protection and occupation which supplies service in return for taxes, land rent and non-market transitions

Question 15

Who’s theory were the producer and consumer city?

Answer 15

Max Weber

Question 16

What did Max Weber argue?

Answer 16

He argued that cultural factors were to cause the divergence. He argued religious was a driven force of economic growth

Question 17

Latin America until 1800:

Answer 17

• Large capital cities
• Coercion-oriented
• Centralized system of control: colonial empires

Question 18

North America until 1800:

Answer 18

• Late urbanization and less sizeable cities
• Market-oriented
• Decentralized system of control

Question 19

Japan and China until 1800:

Answer 19

Mixed systems
- High level of urbanization
- Centralized system of control
Consumer and producer cities (coercion and market-oriented)

Question 20

Middle east 800-1800

Answer 20

• The first big cities
• Highest level of urbanization around 900
• String centralized system of control
• Capital cities dominant

Question 21

Europe 800-1800

Answer 21

• Large cities and urbanization only after ca. 900
• Low urbanization level before 800, developing after 900
• Fragmented political system
• capital cities, but in some regions they become market-oriented

Question 22

Western europe 800-1800
Differences within Europe

Answer 22

• Decentralized coercion VS decentrialized market-orientation
  Conclusion of Van Bavel et al. that leads to less sustainable economic growth
• Centralization of power
• Centralization of power in few cities
• Weak local institutions

Question 23

What are the results of industrialization?

Answer 23

Level urbanization western europe and north america surpasses the rest of the world

Question 24

What did Kingsley Davis (1965) say?

Answer 24

• Urbanization is caused by rural-urban migration
• Industrialization linked to the growth of cities
• S-curve of urbanization

Question 25

Revision of Kingsley Davis:

Answer 25

1. The living standard of people in developing countries rises
2. Developed countries faced with declining populations
3. Link between high leve of urbanization and industrialization?

Question 26

Western cities: Max Weber

Answer 26

• Citizens communities
• Autonomous
• Market-orientation > producer cities

Question 27

Oriental cities (China, Japan): Max Weber

Answer 27

• No citizenship community
• Bureaucratic kingdom-city
• Coercion and despotism > consumer cities

Question 28

What did Robert Allen (1983) say?

Answer 28

• Application scientic knowledge to innovative practices (steam engine, weaving machines)
• Spread of an engineering culture
• Entrepreneurial business elite (merchants, proffesionals, manufacturers, landowners)