Scale-free distribution as an economic invariant: a theoretical approach

Anindya S. Chakrabarti ()
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Anindya S. Chakrabarti: Boston University

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, 2017, vol. 12, issue 1, No 1, 26 pages

Abstract: Abstract The presence of power laws (scale-free distributions) in widely different economic and social phenomena is well established. Here we focus on three specific cases viz. wealth distribution, firm size distribution and the city size distribution. We present a common framework to explain the origin of this feature in such seemingly unrelated contexts. It is shown that the equilibrium configurations of some general economic mechanisms are consistent with a power law in general and Zipf’s law in particular, in size distribution and it is an attractor under some conditions.

Keywords: Zipf’s law; City-size; Firm-size; Wealth distribution; Network structure; Stochastic processes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 D31 J63 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11403-015-0148-6

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