**Abstract:** We analyze a large dataset of commercial records produced by Assyrian merchants in the 19th Century BCE. Using the information collected from these records, we estimate a structural gravity model of long-distance trade in the Bronze Age. We use our structural gravity model to locate lost ancient cities. In many instances, our structural estimates confirm the conjectures of historians who follow different methodologies. In some instances, our estimates confirm one conjecture against others. Confronting our structural estimates for ancient city sizes to modern data on population, income, and regional trade, we document persistent patterns in the distribution of city sizes across four millennia, even after controlling for time-invariant geographic attributes such as agricultural suitability. Finally, we offer evidence in support of the hypothesis that large cities tend to emerge at the intersections of natural transport routes, as dictated by topography.
Thursday, 1/11/2018
11:00am-12:20pm
Kent 120
A light lunch will be provided by Pizza Capri.
**Dr. Hortaçsu's** work is focused on empirically assessing the efficiency of markets, utilizing detailed micro-level data from the markets he studies to estimate preference and technology parameters that rationalize individual behavior and then use the estimated preferences and technological parameters to construct (constrained) “efficient” benchmarks and assess how far observed market outcomes are from efficiency. This framework has been applied to many market settings, including financial markets, energy markets, and the Internet, and a variety of market clearing mechanisms, including auctions, matching, and costly search. His current research interests include: Industrial organization; auctions; search and matching models; production and financial networks; applications in finance, energy markets and the internet. For more information, visit his homepage.
The 2017-2018 Computational Social Science Workshop meets each Thursday from 11 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. in Kent 120. All interested faculty and graduate students are welcome.
Students in the Masters of Computational Social Science program are expected to attend and join the discussion by posting a comment on the issues page of the workshop's public repository on GitHub. Further instructions are documented in the Computational Social Science Workshop's README on Github.