Zipf’s law for cities: an empirical examination
Yannis Ioannides and
Henry Overman
LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library
Abstract:
We use data for metro areas in the United States, from the US Census for 1900 - 1990, to test the validity of Zipf's Law for cities. Previous investigations are restricted to regressions of log size against log rank. In contrast, we use a nonparametric procedure to calculate local Zipf exponents from the mean and variance of city growth rates. This also allows us to test for the validity of Gibrat's Law for city growth processes. Despite variation in growth rates as a function of city size, Gibrat's Law does hold. In addition the local Zipf exponents are broadly consistent with Zipf's Law. Deviations from Zipf's Law are easily explained by deviations from Gibrat's Law.
Keywords: Zipf's Law; Gibrat's Law; urban growth; estimation of Brownian motion. JEL classification codes: R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2003-03-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (70)
Published in Regional Science and Urban Economics, 1, March, 2003, 33(2), pp. 127 - 137. ISSN: 0166-0462
Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/583/ Open access version. (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Zipf's law for cities: an empirical examination (2003)
Working Paper: Zipfs Law for Cities: An Empirical Examination (2000)
Working Paper: Zipf's law for cities: an empirical examination (2000)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:583
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