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Explaining the size distribution of cities: x-treme economies

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Berliant, Marcus
Watanabe, Hiroki

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Abstract

We criticize the theories used to explain the size distribution of cities. They take an empirical fact and work backward to obtain assumptions on primitives. The induced theoretical assumptions on consumer behavior, particularly about their inability to insure against the city-level productivity shocks in the model, are untenable. With either self insurance or insurance markets, and either an arbitrarily small cost of moving or the assumption that consumers do not perfectly observe the shocks to firms' technologies, the agents will never move. Even without these frictions, our analysis yields another equilibrium with insurance where consumers never move. Thus, insurance is a substitute for movement. We propose an alternative class of models, involving extreme risk against which consumers will not insure. Instead, they will move, generating a Fréchet distribution of city sizes that is empirically competitive with other models.

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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 13671.

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Date of creation: 27 Feb 2009
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Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:13671

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Related research
Keywords: Zipf's Law; Gibrat's Law; Size Distribution of Cities; Extreme Value Theory;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
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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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. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Mark L. J. Wright, 2007. "Urban Structure and Growth," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 74(2), pages 597-624, 04. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December. [Downloadable!]
  3. Berliant, Marcus & Kung, Fan-chin, 2008. "Can Information Asymmetry Cause Agglomeration?," MPRA Paper 7414, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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  4. 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. [Downloadable!]
  5. Xavier Gabaix, 1999. "Zipf'S Law For Cities: An Explanation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 114(3), pages 739-767, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. 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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  7. Duranton, Gilles, 2006. "Some foundations for Zipf's law: Product proliferation and local spillovers," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 542-563, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Starrett, David, 1978. "Market allocations of location choice in a model with free mobility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 21-37, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Fujita, Masahisa & Mori, Tomoya, 1997. "Structural stability and evolution of urban systems," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(4-5), pages 399-442, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum, 2002. "Technology, Geography, and Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1741-1779, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. 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)
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Cited by:
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  1. Tomoya Mori & Tony E. Smith, 2009. "A Reconsideration of the NAS Rule from an Industrial Agglomeration Perspective," KIER Working Papers 669, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
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