Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities: Reply

2009 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 1676-1683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Eeckhout
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
City Size ◽  
Visual Interpretation ◽  
Gibrat’S Law ◽  
Gibrat's Law ◽  
Lognormal Size Distribution ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
Distribution Tail ◽  
The City

This reply refutes the objection raised by Levy (2009) about the fit of the upper tail of the city size distribution in Eeckhout (2004). I show that the method on which his conclusion is based is unsubstantiated. The visual interpretation of the fit on log-log plots is misleading. In addition, the methodology used to estimate a truncated subsample of the distribution while testing its significance against a distribution with prespecified parameters is ill-founded. The main conclusion is that Gibrat's law holds: city sizes follow proportionate growth, thus giving rise to a lognormal size distribution, tail included. (JEL R11, R12, R23)

Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities: Comment

2009 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 1672-1675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Levy
Keyword(s):  
Income Distribution ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Empirical Distribution ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
City Size ◽  
Power Law Distribution ◽  
Gibrat’S Law ◽  
Gibrat's Law ◽  
City Size Distribution

Jan Eeckhout (2004) reports that the empirical city size distribution is lognormal, consistent with Gibrat's Law. We show that for the top 0.6 percent of the largest cities, the empirical distribution is dramatically different from the lognormal, and follows a power law. This top part is extremely important as it accounts for more than 23 percent of the population. The empirical hybrid lognormal-power-law distribution revealed may be characteristic of other key distributions, such as the wealth distribution and the income distribution. This distribution is not consistent with a simple Gibrat proportionate effect process, and its origin presents a puzzle yet to be answered. (JEL R11, R12, R23)

scholarly journals Is Economic Integration a Historical Shock to City-size Distribution?

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Engin Sorhun
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Structural Break ◽  
City Size ◽  
Space Distribution ◽  
Eu Integration ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
Bound Test ◽  
The City ◽  
The Eu

Based on the assumption that the economic integration process contributes, via market reforms, to the dynamics of the space distribution in candidate countries, this study examines (i) whether agglomeration forces or dispersion forces are dominant; (ii) whether EU-integration causes a structural break to the space distribution over time; (iii) whether EU-integration makes the city-size distribution more even or uneven in eight eastern European Union members (EU–8). To carry out the analysis, the Ziwot-Andrew and Cusum Square tests are used to detect structural breaks; the ARDL Bound test is used to reveal the interaction between long-run and short-run equilibrium; and the Granger test is used to determine the direction of the causality among the variables. The main results are: the integration with the EU (i) caused a structural break to the city-size distribution, (ii) made the city-size distribution more uneven and (iii) stimulated the agglomerating forces over the spreading forces in the EU–8.

scholarly journals A scale-free transportation network explains the city-size distribution

10.3982/qe619 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1419-1451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Berliant ◽  
Axel H. Watanabe
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
City Size ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
The City

Macro and Micro Dynamics of the City Size Distribution

2009 ◽  
pp. 33-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucien Benguigui ◽  
Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal ◽  
Michael Batty
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
City Size ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
The City

City-Size Distribution and the Size of Urban Systems

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 905-913 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Urban System ◽  
City Size ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
The City

This paper is an analysis of the city-size distribution for thirty-five countries of the world in 1975; the purpose is to explain statistically the regularity of the rank-size distribution by the number of cities included in the urban systems. The rank-size parameters have been computed for each country and also for four large urban systems in which several population thresholds have been defined. These thresholds seem to have more influence than the number of cities included in the urban system on the regularity of the distribution.

scholarly journals Investigation of urban regularities for Croatia in the period from 1857 to 2011

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-330
Author(s):  
Hrvoje Jošić ◽  
Berislav Žmuk
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Unit Root ◽  
Urban Economics ◽  
Unit Roots ◽  
City Size ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Urban Hierarchy ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
Gibrat’S Law ◽  
Gibrat's Law

Two main regularities in the field of urban economics are Zipf’s law and Gibrat’s law. Zipf’s law states that distribution of largest cities should obey the Pareto rank-size distribution while Gibrat’s law states that proportionate growth of cities is independent of its size. These two laws are interconnected and therefore are often considered together. The objective of this paper is the investigation of urban regularities for Croatia in the period from 1857 to 2011. In order to estimate and evaluate the structure of Croatian urban hierarchy, Pareto or Zipf’s coefficients are calculated. The results have shown that the coefficient values for the largest settlements in different years are close to one, indicating that the Croatian urban hierarchy system follows the rank-size distribution and therefore obeys Zipf's law. The independence of city growth regarding the city size is tested using penal unit roots. Results for Gibrat's law testing using panel unit root tests have shown that there is a presence of unit root in growth of settlements therefore leading to the acceptance of Gibrat’s law.

The temporal evolution of the city size distribution

2009 ◽  
Vol 388 (7) ◽  
pp. 1187-1195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucien Benguigui ◽  
Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Temporal Evolution ◽  
City Size ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
The City
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