Size Distribution of All Italian Cities

Marianna Belloc

No 20989, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: By revisiting well-established empirical regularities, this paper examines the distributional properties of city sizes in Italy over the period 2001-2024. Three main findings emerge. First, when considering the full population of approximately 7,900 municipalities, city sizes are well approximated by a lognormal distribution. Second, consistent with Gibrat’s law, city population growth rates appear to be independent of initial city size. Third, the upper tail of the distribution follows Zipf’s law, although the results are sensitive to the choice of truncation threshold. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to urban dynamics and the organization of the Italian urban system.

JEL-codes: C46 J10 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-01
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