Does history matter for urban primacy? The case of Vienna

This paper provides a new approach to examine the impact of history and path dependence on city growth. In particular, it is argued that the break-up of Austria-Hungary in 1918 provides a natural experiment to analyze these issues as it allows to explore the impact of a 85% reduction in country size and population on the largest city in the former Habsburg Empire, Vienna. I find that Vienna's dominance of the national urban structure in Austria first decreases for a few decades, but then stabilizes, despite its overdimension. I interpret these results as evidence in favor of lock-in effects. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.