On the Distribution of City Sizes

Juan Cordoba ()

Urban/Regional from EconWPA

Abstract: The city size distribution of many countries is remarkably well approximated by a Pareto distribution. We study what constraints this regularity imposes on standard urban models. We find that under general conditions urban models must have (i) a balanced growth path and (ii) a Pareto distribution for the underlying source of randomness. In particular, one of the following combinations can induce a Pareto distribution of city sizes: (i) preferences for different goods follow reflected random walks, and the elasticity of substitution between goods is 1; or (ii) total factor productivities in the production of different goods follow reflected random walks, and increasing returns are equal across goods.

Keywords: City Size Distribution; Zipf's Law; Rank-Size Rule; Pareto Distribution; Urban Growth; Multisectorial Models; Balanced Growth; Cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R11 R12 O41 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
Date: 2003-02-14
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 31 ; figures: included
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http://129.3.20.41/eps/urb/papers/0302/0302002.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: On the distribution of city sizes (2008)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpur:0302002

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