Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities: Reply

Jan Eeckhout

American Economic Review, 2009, vol. 99, issue 4, 1676-83

Abstract: This reply refutes the objection raised by Levy (2009) about the fit of the upper tail of the city size distribution in Eeckhout (2004). I show that the method on which his conclusion is based is unsubstantiated. The visual interpretation of the fit on log-log plots is misleading. In addition, the methodology used to estimate a truncated subsample of the distribution while testing its significance against a distribution with prespecified parameters is ill-founded. The main conclusion is that Gibrat's law holds: city sizes follow proportionate growth, thus giving rise to a lognormal size distribution, tail included. (JEL R11, R12, R23)

JEL-codes: R11 R12 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.99.4.1676
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

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