This is a critique of Polese's recent paper entitled 'Cities and national economic growth: a reappraisal' which purports to test the 'Jacobs hypothesis'. It is argued that both main variables used, 'national levels of urbanisation' and 'per capita GDP growth', are misspecified. The critique is related to the state-centric nature of social science and policy.
References
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Polèse, M. (2005) Cities and national economic growth: a reappraisal, UrbanStudies, 42(8), pp. 1429-1451.
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Taylor, P.J. (1996) Embedded statism and the social sciences: opening up to new spaces, Environment and Planning A, 28, pp. 1917-1928.
