A new framework for the US city size distribution: Empirical evidence and theory

Arturo Ramos, Fernando Sanz-Gracia and Rafael González-Val

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We study the US city size distribution using the Census places data, without size restriction, for the period (1900-2010). Also, we use the recently introduced US City Clustering Algorithm (CCA) data for 1991 and 2000. We compare the lognormal, two distributions named after Ioannides and Skouras (2013) and the double Pareto lognormal with two newly introduced distributions. The empirical results are overwhelming: One of the new distributions widely outperform any of the previously used density functions for each type of data. We also develop a theory which generates the new distributions based on the standard geometric Brownian motion for the population in the short term. We propose some extensions of the theory in order to deal with the long term empirical features.

Keywords: US city size distribution; population thresholds; lower and upper tail; new statistical distributions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 C16 R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53277/1/MPRA_paper_52190.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53324/9/MPRA_paper_53324.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/56545/17/MPRA_paper_56545.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/57645/17/MPRA_paper_56545.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A new framework for US city size distribution: Empirical evidence and theory (2014)
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