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Urban structure and growth

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Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
Mark L. J. Wright

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Abstract

Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, implied by the existence of cities, and aggregate constant returns, implied by balanced growth. To address this tension, we develop a general equilibrium theory of economic growth in an urban environment. In our theory, variation in the urban structure through the growth, birth, and death of cities is the margin that eliminates local increasing returns to yield constant returns to scale in the aggregate. We show that, consistent with the data, the theory produces a city size distribution that is well approximated by Zipf’s Law, but that also displays the observed systematic under-representation of both very small and very large cities. Using our model, we show that the dispersion of city sizes is consistent with the dispersion of productivity shocks found in the data.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in its series Staff Report with number 381.

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Date of creation: 2006
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:381

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  4. Mark L.J. Wright & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2004. "Firm Size Dynamics in the Aggregate Economy," 2004 Meeting Papers 878, Society for Economic Dynamics. [Downloadable!]
  5. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Mark L. J. Wright, 2003. "Urban structure and growth," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 141, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Juan Carlos Cordoba, 2003. "On the Distribution of City Sizes," Urban/Regional 0302002, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
  7. Duncan Black & Vernon Henderson, 1999. "A Theory of Urban Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 252-284, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Xavier Gabaix, 1999. "Zipf's Law and the Growth of Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 129-132, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 1989. "On the Mechanics of Economic Development," NBER Reprints 1176, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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  18. Chun-Chung Au & Vernon Henderson, 2002. "How Migration Restrictions Limit Agglomeration and Productivity in China," NBER Working Papers 8707, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Gilles Duranton, 2007. "Urban Evolutions: The Fast, the Slow, and the Still," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 197-221, March.
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  21. Romer, Paul M, 1990. "Endogenous Technological Change," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages S71-102, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Mark L.J. Wright, 2005. "Firm Size Dynamics in the Aggregate Economy," NBER Working Papers 11261, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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