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Cities and Countries

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Author Info
Andrew K. Rose

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Abstract

If one ranks cities by population, the rank of a city is inversely related to its size, a well-documented phenomenon known as Zipf's Law. Further, the growth rate of a city's population is uncorrelated with its size, another well-known characteristic known as Gibrat's Law. In this paper, I show that both characteristics are true of countries as well as cities; the size distributions of cities and countries are similar. But theories that explain the size-distribution of cities do not obviously apply in explaining the size-distribution of countries. The similarity of city- and country-size distributions is an interesting riddle.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 11762.

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Date of creation: Nov 2005
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11762

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
F00 - International Economics - - General - - - General
R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Mark Wright & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2004. "Urban Structure and Growth," 2004 Meeting Papers 33, Society for Economic Dynamics. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Gabaix, Xavier & Ioannides, Yannis M., 2004. "The evolution of city size distributions," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 53, pages 2341-2378 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December. [Downloadable!]
  4. Krugman, Paul, 1996. "Confronting the Mystery of Urban Hierarchy," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 399-418, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Nitsch, Volker, 2005. "Zipf zipped," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 86-100, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Clemente, Jesús & González-Val, Rafael & Olloqui, Irene, 2008. "Zipf’s and Gibrat’s laws for migrations," MPRA Paper 9731, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  2. González-Val, Rafael, 2009. "The evolution of US city size distribution from a long term perspective (1900-2000)," MPRA Paper 9732, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 Nov 2009. [Downloadable!]
  3. Bowen, H. & Munandar, H. & Viaene, J.M., 2006. "Evidence and implications of zipf’s law for integrated economies," Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School Working Paper Series 2006-03, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. González-Val, Rafael & Sanso-Navarro, Marcos, 2009. "Gibrat’s law for countries," MPRA Paper 9733, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  5. Anna, BOGOMOLNAIA & Michel, LE BRETON & Alexei, SAVVATEEV & Sholmo, WEBER, 2006. "Heterogeneity gap in stable juridiction structures," Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) 2006019, Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques. [Downloadable!]
  6. Mariusz A. Sumlinski, 2008. "International Reserves-Too Much of a Zipf's Thing," IMF Working Papers 08/11, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
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