The power-law distribution of cumulative coal production

Andrew Balthrop and Siyu Quan

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 530, issue C

Abstract: The coal industry is dominated by the largest mines, with 1% of coal mines in the U.S. being responsible for 65% of the coal cumulatively produced. We show that this ”heavy tail” can be well approximated by a power law, where mine-level cumulative production is inversely proportionate to distributional rank. Maximum likelihood and regression-based procedures estimate the counter-cumulative power-law parameter to be less than one, indicating there is no well-defined mean or variance for cumulative production. Goodness of fit tests indicate the power-law is a better fit to the data than other competing distributions, including the lognormal.

Keywords: Coal; Power law; Pareto distribution; Scaling distribution; Fractal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:530:y:2019:i:c:s037843711930929x

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.121573

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