Does Zipf’s law hold for primate cities? Some evidence from a discriminant analysis of world countries

Boris Portnov ()

Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, 2011, vol. 31, issue 2, 113-129

Abstract: Largest cities of countries do not always follow Zipf’s Law, generally ‘obeyed’ by smaller localities. In an attempt to analyze factors which may drive major cities of nations away from the ‘rank-size’ trend line stipulated by Zipf’s Law, we investigated the population size gap between the first and second cities of 177 countries worldwide. According to our findings, high development levels are likely to reduce this gap, while the first city being the national capital is likely to widen the gap between the largest city and its ‘nearest neighbor’ in the national rank-size hierarchy. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2011

Keywords: Main cities of countries; Zipf’s law; Population size of cities; ‘Frontrunner’ approach; Geographic and development attributes; O18; R11; R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10037-011-0055-9

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