Gibrat’s law for cities, growth regressions and sample size

Rafael González-Val, Luis Lanaspa () and Fernando Sanz-Gracia

Economics Letters, 2013, vol. 118, issue 2, 367-369

Abstract: This paper uses un-truncated city population data from six countries (the United States, Spain, Italy, France, England and Japan) to illustrate how parametric growth regressions can lead to biased results when testing for Gibrat’s law in city size distributions. The OLS results show non-monotonic behaviours depending on the sample size. Moreover, it is possible to find a critical sample size from which we reject Gibrat’s law.

Keywords: Gibrat’s law; City size distribution; Urban growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R00 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Working Paper: Gibrat’s law for cities, growth regressions and sample size (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:118:y:2013:i:2:p:367-369

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2012.11.020

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