The Evolution of City Size Distributions
Xavier Gabaix xgabaix@mit.edu MIT and NBER, USA. MIT and NBER. USA
Yannis M. Ioannides yannis.ioannides@tufts.edu Tufts University, USA. Tufts University. USA
JEL classification: C2, N9, R1
Abstract
We review the accumulated knowledge on city size distributions and determinants of urban growth. This topic is of interest because of a number of key stylized facts, including notably Zipf’s law for cities (which states that the number of cities of size greater than S is proportional to 1/S) and the importance of urban primacy. We first review the empirical evidence on the upper tail of city size distribution. We offer a novel discussion of the important econometric issues in the characterization ...
Get Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
