Abstract
A common economic motivation for relocating a country’s capital city is to mitigate big-city problems in the former capital and foster economic growth in the new capital. Analyzing the relocation of Myanmar’s capital city, we find that the economic losses in the former capital outweigh the near-term gains in the new one. In addition, the relocation does not promptly curb urban sprawl or air pollution in the former capital.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access through your institution
Change institution
Buy or subscribe
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Learn more
Buy this article
Purchase on SpringerLink
Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Additional access options:
Log in
Learn about institutional subscriptions
Read our FAQs
Contact customer support
Fig. 1: Changes in the nighttime lights in the two capital regions and across Myanmar.
Fig. 2: Parallel trends and causal effects of capital relocation on nighttime lights, urban land area and AOD.
Data availability
The primary data used in this study are publicly accessible and available for download or use from the following sources: Version 4 DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights Time Series from the Earth Observation Group of NOAA NCEI (https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/dmsp/downloadV4composites.html), Climate Change Initiative Land Cover products from ESA (https://www.esa-landcover-cci.org), MCD19A2 V6.1 data product from NASA LP DAAC at the USGS EROS Center (https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/MODIS_061_MCD19A2_GRANULES 061 MCD19A2 GRANULES), and LandScan Global from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (https://landscan.ornl.gov). The country shapefiles used in the analysis can be accessed through DIVA-GIS (https://diva-gis.org/data.html) and geoBoundaries (https://www.geoboundaries.org/countryDownloads.html). The processed data applied in this study have been deposited on GitHub at https://github.com/linhtetaung-cloud/capital_city.
Code availability
The empirical analyses are conducted using StataSE 18, and the corresponding code scripts are available in the public repository on GitHub at https://github.com/linhtetaung-cloud/capital_city.
References
Vale, L. J. in Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities (ed. Gordon, D. L.) 15–37 (Routledge, 2006).
Mayer, H., Sager, F., Kaufmann, D. & Warland, M. Capital city dynamics: linking regional innovation systems, locational policies and policy regimes. Cities 51, 11–20 (2016).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance 2018 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2018).
Tabuchi, T. Historical trends of agglomeration to the capital region and new economic geography. Reg. Sci. Urban Econ. 44, 50–59 (2014).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Campante, F. R., Do, Q.-A. & Guimaraes, B. Capital cities, conflict, and misgovernance. Am. Econ. J. Appl. Econ. 11, 298–337 (2019).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Campante, F. R. & Do, Q.-A. Isolated capital cities, accountability, and corruption: evidence from US states. Am. Econ. Rev. 104, 2456–2481 (2014).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Rossman, V. Capital Cities: Varieties and Patterns of Development and Relocation (Routledge, 2016).
Lu, M., Ou, H. & Zhong, Y. Political governance and urban systems: a persistent shock on population distribution from capital relocation in ancient China. Reg. Sci. Urban Econ. 108, 104034 (2024).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Jia, J., Liang, X. & Ma, G. Political hierarchy and regional economic development: evidence from a spatial discontinuity in China. J. Public Econ. 194, 104352 (2021).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Quistorff, B. Capitalitis? Effects of the 1960 Brazilian capital relocation. SSRN (2015); https://ssrn.com/abstract=2588620
Hall, P. in Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities (ed. Gordon, D. L.) 8–14 (Routledge, 2006).
Ishenda, D. & Shi, G. Determinants in relocation of capital cities. J. Public Adm. Gov. 9, 200–220 (2019).
Google Scholar
Henderson, J. V., Storeygard, A. & Weil, D. N. Measuring economic growth from outer space. Am. Econ. Rev. 102, 994–1028 (2012).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Chen, X. & Nordhaus, W. D. Using luminosity data as a proxy for economic statistics. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108, 8589–8594 (2011).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Montiel Olea, J. L. & Plagborg-Møller, M. Simultaneous confidence bands: theory, implementation, and an application to SVARs. J. Appl. Econ. 34, 1–17 (2019).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Smith, C. B. & Kulka, A. When is long-run agglomeration possible? Evidence from county seat wars. In 2024 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting (Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, 2024); https://ideas.repec.org//p/ags/aaea22/343859.html
Bleakley, H. & Lin, J. Portage and path dependence. Q. J. Econ. 127, 587–644 (2012).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Davis, D. R. & Weinstein, D. E. Bones, bombs, and break points: the geography of economic activity. Am. Econ. Rev. 92, 1269–1289 (2002).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Deng, X., Huang, J., Rozelle, S. & Uchida, E. Economic growth and the expansion of urban land in China. Urban Stud. 47, 813–843 (2010).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Zou, E. Y. Unwatched pollution: the effect of intermittent monitoring on air quality. Am. Econ. Rev. 111, 2101–2126 (2021).
ArticleGoogle Scholar
Lyapustin, A., & Wang, Y. MODIS/Terra+Aqua Land Aerosol Optical Depth Daily L2G Global 1km SIN Grid V061, NASA EOSDIS Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MCD19A2.061 (2022).
Bright, E., & Coleman, P. LandScan Global 2002, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, https://doi.org/10.48690/1524198 (2003).
Download references
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (number 72103220) to H.Y. X.H. gratefully acknowledges the Chinese Government Scholarship Program. We extend our sincere gratitude to the Earth Observation Group, the Climate Change Initiative, the NASA LP DAAC, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, DIVA-GIS, and geoBoundaries for their efforts in making the data publicly accessible, which were instrumental in supporting this research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Institute of Finance and Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China
Xiaochen Huang & Haosheng Yan
School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Zebang Zhang
Authors
Xiaochen Huang
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMedGoogle Scholar
2. Haosheng Yan
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMedGoogle Scholar
3. Zebang Zhang
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMedGoogle Scholar
Contributions
X.H. was responsible for data extraction, processing and empirical analysis, and contributed to drafting and writing the paper. H.Y. designed the study, conducted empirical analysis, and contributed to drafting and writing the paper. Z.Z. contributed to conducting empirical analysis and writing of the paper.
Corresponding author
Correspondence to Haosheng Yan.
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Cities thanks Brian Quistorff, Vadim Rossman and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2, Sections 1–6 and Tables 1–5.
Reporting Summary
Source data
Source Data Fig. 1
Unprocessed data for visualizing the difference in nighttime lights in Myanmar between 2001 and 2008.
Source Data Fig. 2
Processed data on nighttime lights, urban land area, AOD and township characteristics for all 286 townships in Myanmar, spanning from 1997 to 2009.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark
Cite this article
Huang, X., Yan, H. & Zhang, Z. Economic impacts of capital city relocation in Myanmar. Nat Cities (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00217-x
Download citation
Received:09 July 2024
Accepted:10 February 2025
Published:17 March 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00217-x
Share this article
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Get shareable link
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Copy to clipboard
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative