{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/a-perfect-storm-first-nature-geography-and","title":"A Perfect Storm: First-Nature Geography and Economic Development","arxiv_id":"2408.00885","date":"2024-08-01","proceeding":null,"authors":["Christian Vedel"],"abstract":"In 1825 a storm cut a new channel through Denmark's Limfjord, providing an exogenous shock to first-nature geography. Difference-in-differences estimates show the channel increased trade immediately and, within a generation, lifted population by 26.7 percent - an elasticity of 1.6 relative to the improved market access. Higher fertility and economic growth of new industries, not migration, drove the expansion. A mirror experiment - the waterway's closure circa 1086-1208 - caused symmetric declines in medieval coin and building finds, bolstering external validity. These results offer the first robust causal evidence that first-nature geomorphology shapes the location of economic activity.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00885v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.00885v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"a-perfect-storm-first-nature-geography-and","repo_url":"https://github.com/christianvedels/A_perfect_storm","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null},{"paper_slug":"a-perfect-storm-first-nature-geography-and","repo_url":"https://github.com/christianvedels/A_perfect_storm_replication","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}