Zipf's law for cities: a cross country investigation

Kwok Tong Soo ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper assesses the empirical validity of Zipf¿s Law for cities, using new data on 73 countries and two estimation methods ¿ OLS and the Hill estimator. With either estimator, we reject Zipf¿s Law far more often than we would expect based on random chance; for 53 out of 73 countries using OLS, and for 30 out of 73 countries using the Hill estimator. The OLS estimates of the Pareto exponent are roughly normally distributed, but those of the Hill estimator are bimodal. Variations in the value of the Pareto exponent are better explained by political economy variables than by economic geography variables.

Keywords: Cities; Zipfs Law; Pareto distribution; Hill estimator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C16 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2004-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19947/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Zipf's Law for cities: a cross-country investigation (2005)
Working Paper: Zipfs Law for Cities: A Cross Country Investigation (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:19947

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