Zipf distribution in top Chinese firms and an economic explanation
Abstract
By analyzing the data of top 500 Chinese firms from the year 2002 to 2007, we reveal that their revenues and ranks obey the Zipf’s law with exponent of 1 for each year. This result confirms the universality of firm size character which has been presented in many other empirical works, since China possesses a unique ideological and political system. We offer an explanation of it based on a simple economic model which takes production and capital accumulation into account.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications.
Volume (Year): 388 (2009)
Issue (Month): 10 ()
Pages: 2020-2024
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/
Related research
Keywords: Firm size distribution; Zipf’s law; AK model; Multiplicative process;References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Fujimoto, Shouji & Ishikawa, Atushi & Mizuno, Takayuki & Watanabe, Tsutomu, 2011. "A new method for measuring tail exponents of firm size distributions," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 5(20), pages 1-20.
- Sun, Churen & Zhang, Tao, 2012. "Export, Productivity Pattern, and Firm Size Distribution," MPRA Paper 36742, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Tomson Ogwang, 2011. "Power laws in top wealth distributions: evidence from Canada," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 473-486, October.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:388:y:2009:i:10:p:2020-2024For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

