IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v513y2019icp55-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A note on “Pareto tails and lognormal body of US cities size distribution”

Author

Listed:
  • Kwong, Hok Shing
  • Nadarajah, Saralees

Abstract

Luckstead and Devadoss (2017) fitted a distribution made up of lower tail Pareto, lognormal body, and upper tail Pareto to city sizes in the US. Here, we propose a class of distributions providing better fits. The fits are assessed in terms of Akaike Information Criterion, Bayesian Information Criterion and probability plots.

Suggested Citation

  • Kwong, Hok Shing & Nadarajah, Saralees, 2019. "A note on “Pareto tails and lognormal body of US cities size distribution”," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 513(C), pages 55-62.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:513:y:2019:i:c:p:55-62
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2018.08.073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437118310148
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2018.08.073?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December.
    2. Luckstead, Jeff & Devadoss, Stephen, 2017. "Pareto tails and lognormal body of US cities size distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 465(C), pages 573-578.
    3. Kristian Giesen & Jens Suedekum, 2012. "The size distribution across all “cities”: a unifying approach," Working Papers 2012/2, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    4. Benguigui, Lucien & Blumenfeld-Lieberthal, Efrat, 2007. "A dynamic model for city size distribution beyond Zipf's law," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 384(2), pages 613-627.
    5. Chen, Yanguang, 2016. "The evolution of Zipf’s law indicative of city development," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 443(C), pages 555-567.
    6. Gangopadhyay, Kausik & Basu, B., 2009. "City size distributions for India and China," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(13), pages 2682-2688.
    7. Luckstead, Jeff & Devadoss, Stephen & Danforth, Diana, 2017. "The size distributions of all Indian cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 474(C), pages 237-249.
    8. Wu, Jian-Xin & He, Ling-Yun, 2017. "How do Chinese cities grow? A distribution dynamics approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 470(C), pages 105-118.
    9. Ioannides, Yannis & Skouras, Spyros, 2013. "US city size distribution: Robustly Pareto, but only in the tail," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 18-29.
    10. Semboloni, Ferdinando & Leyvraz, François, 2005. "Size and resources driven migration resulting in a power-law distribution of cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 352(2), pages 612-628.
    11. Sarabia, José María & Prieto, Faustino, 2009. "The Pareto-positive stable distribution: A new descriptive model for city size data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(19), pages 4179-4191.
    12. Hamparsum Bozdogan, 1987. "Model selection and Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC): The general theory and its analytical extensions," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 345-370, September.
    13. Kristian Giesen & Jens Suedekum, 2012. "The Size Distribution across all "Cities": A Unifying Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 3730, CESifo Group Munich.
    14. Xavier Gabaix, 1999. "Zipf's Law for Cities: An Explanation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 739-767.
    15. Devadoss, Stephen & Luckstead, Jeff, 2016. "Size distribution of U.S. lower tail cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 444(C), pages 158-162.
    16. Benguigui, Lucien & Blumenfeld-Lieberthal, Efrat, 2009. "The temporal evolution of the city size distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(7), pages 1187-1195.
    17. Moura, Newton J. & Ribeiro, Marcelo B., 2006. "Zipf law for Brazilian cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 367(C), pages 441-448.
    18. Peng, Guohua, 2010. "Zipf’s law for Chinese cities: Rolling sample regressions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(18), pages 3804-3813.
    19. Gómez-Déniz, Emilio & Calderín-Ojeda, Enrique, 2015. "On the use of the Pareto ArcTan distribution for describing city size in Australia and New Zealand," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 436(C), pages 821-832.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Miguel Puente-Ajovín & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia, 2020. "Is there a universal parametric city size distribution? Empirical evidence for 70 countries," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 65(3), pages 727-741, December.
    2. Ruben Dewitte & Michel Dumont & Glenn Rayp & Peter Willemé, 2022. "Unobserved heterogeneity in the productivity distribution and gains from trade," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(3), pages 1566-1597, August.
    3. Massing, Till & Puente-Ajovín, Miguel & Ramos, Arturo, 2020. "On the parametric description of log-growth rates of cities’ sizes of four European countries and the USA," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 551(C).
    4. Puente-Ajovín, Miguel & Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando & Arribas-Bel, Daniel, 2020. "How sensitive is city size distribution to the definition of city? The case of Spain," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    5. Tomaschitz, Roman, 2020. "Multiply broken power-law densities as survival functions: An alternative to Pareto and lognormal fits," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 541(C).
    6. Campolieti, Michele & Ramos, Arturo, 2021. "The distribution of strike size: Empirical evidence from Europe and North America in the 19th and 20th centuries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 563(C).
    7. Ramos, Arturo, 2019. "Addenda to “Are the log-growth rates of city sizes distributed normally? Empirical evidence for the USA [Empir. Econ. (2017) 53:1109-1123]”," MPRA Paper 93032, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Arturo, Ramos, 2019. "Have the log-population processes stationary and independent increments? Empirical evidence for Italy, Spain and the USA along more than a century," MPRA Paper 93562, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Peña, Guillermo & Puente-Ajovín, Miguel & Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2022. "Log-growth rates of CO2: An empirical analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 588(C).
    10. Arturo Ramos & Till Massing & Atushi Ishikawa & Shouji Fujimoto & Takayuki Mizuno, 2023. "Composite distributions in the social sciences: A comparative empirical study of firms' sales distribution for France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Spain," Papers 2301.09438, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arshad, Sidra & Hu, Shougeng & Ashraf, Badar Nadeem, 2019. "Zipf’s law, the coherence of the urban system and city size distribution: Evidence from Pakistan," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 513(C), pages 87-103.
    2. Gualandi, Stefano & Toscani, Giuseppe, 2019. "Size distribution of cities: A kinetic explanation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 524(C), pages 221-234.
    3. Luckstead, Jeff & Devadoss, Stephen & Danforth, Diana, 2017. "The size distributions of all Indian cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 474(C), pages 237-249.
    4. Tomaschitz, Roman, 2020. "Multiply broken power-law densities as survival functions: An alternative to Pareto and lognormal fits," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 541(C).
    5. Arturo, Ramos, 2019. "Have the log-population processes stationary and independent increments? Empirical evidence for Italy, Spain and the USA along more than a century," MPRA Paper 93562, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Valente J. Matlaba & Mark J. Holmes & Philip McCann & Jacques Poot, 2013. "A Century Of The Evolution Of The Urban System In Brazil," Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 129-151, November.
    7. Sen, Hu & Chunxia, Yang & Xueshuai, Zhu & Zhilai, Zheng & Ya, Cao, 2015. "Distributions of region size and GDP and their relation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 430(C), pages 46-56.
    8. Calderín-Ojeda, Enrique, 2016. "The distribution of all French communes: A composite parametric approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 450(C), pages 385-394.
    9. Hasan Engin Duran & Andrzej Cieślik, 2021. "The distribution of city sizes in Turkey: A failure of Zipf’s law due to concavity," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(5), pages 1702-1719, October.
    10. González-Val, Rafael & Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2010. "On the best functions to describe city size distributions," MPRA Paper 21921, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Akhundjanov, Sherzod B. & Devadoss, Stephen & Luckstead, Jeff, 2017. "Size distribution of national CO2 emissions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 182-193.
    12. Kii, Masanobu & Akimoto, Keigo & Doi, Kenji, 2012. "Random-growth urban model with geographical fitness," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(23), pages 5960-5970.
    13. Asif, Muhammad & Hussain, Zawar & Asghar, Zahid & Hussain, Muhammad Irfan & Raftab, Mariya & Shah, Said Farooq & Khan, Akbar Ali, 2021. "A statistical evidence of power law distribution in the upper tail of world billionaires’ data 2010–20," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 581(C).
    14. Sarabia, José María & Prieto, Faustino, 2009. "The Pareto-positive stable distribution: A new descriptive model for city size data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(19), pages 4179-4191.
    15. Safari, Muhammad Aslam Mohd & Masseran, Nurulkamal & Ibrahim, Kamarulzaman & Hussain, Saiful Izzuan, 2019. "A robust and efficient estimator for the tail index of inverse Pareto distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 517(C), pages 431-439.
    16. Chen, Yanguang, 2012. "The rank-size scaling law and entropy-maximizing principle," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(3), pages 767-778.
    17. Chen, Yanguang & Wang, Jiejing, 2014. "Recursive subdivision of urban space and Zipf’s law," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 395(C), pages 392-404.
    18. Rafael González-Val, 2019. "US city-size distribution and space," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 283-300, July.
    19. Behzod B. Ahundjanov & Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Botir B. Okhunjanov, 2022. "Power law in COVID‐19 cases in China," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(2), pages 699-719, April.
    20. Pengfei Li & Ming Lu, 2021. "Urban Systems: Understanding and Predicting the Spatial Distribution of China's Population," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 29(4), pages 35-62, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:513:y:2019:i:c:p:55-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.