On the Distribution of City Sizes

Juan Cordoba

Urban/Regional from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The city size distribution of many countries is remarkably well approximated by a Pareto distribution. We study what constraints this regularity imposes on standard urban models. We find that under general conditions urban models must have (i) a balanced growth path and (ii) a Pareto distribution for the underlying source of randomness. In particular, one of the following combinations can induce a Pareto distribution of city sizes: (i) preferences for different goods follow reflected random walks, and the elasticity of substitution between goods is 1; or (ii) total factor productivities in the production of different goods follow reflected random walks, and increasing returns are equal across goods.

Keywords: City Size Distribution; Zipf's Law; Rank-Size Rule; Pareto Distribution; Urban Growth; Multisectorial Models; Balanced Growth; Cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J10 O41 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2003-02-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 31 ; figures: included
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Related works:
Working Paper: On the Distribution of City Sizes (2010)
Journal Article: On the distribution of city sizes (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpur:0302002

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