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The evolution of the US urban structure from a long-run perspective (1900-2000)

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  • González-Val, Rafael

Abstract

This paper analyses the evolution of the size distribution of cities in the United States throughout the 20th century. In particular, we are interested in testing the fulfilment of two empirical regularities studied in urban economics: Zipf’s law, which postulates that the product between rank and size of a population is constant, and Gibrat’s law or the law of parallel growth, according to which the growth rate of a variable is independent of its initial size. For this parametrical and non-parametrical methods have been used. These laws have already been studied for the American case with the most populous cities or with MSAs. The main contribution of this work is the use of a new database with information on all the cities, thus covering the entire distribution. The results show that although if the sample is considered as a whole the fulfilment of Zipf’s law is rejected, Gibrat’s law is accepted for all the period considered.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 9732.

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Date of creation: 30 Nov 2007
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Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:9732

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Related research

Keywords: Zipf’s law; Gibrat’s law; city size distribution; urban growth;

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References

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  1. Y Ioannides & Henry Overman, 2000. "Cross Sectional Evolution of the US City Size Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp0483, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  2. repec:bla:restud:v:74:y:2007:i:2:p:597-624 is not listed on IDEAS
  3. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December.
  4. Ioannides, Yannis Menelaos & Overman, Henry G., 2003. "Zipf’s law for cities : an empirical examination," Open Access publications from London School of Economics and Political Science http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/, London School of Economics and Political Science.
  5. 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.
  6. Rosen, Kenneth T. & Resnick, Mitchel, 1980. "The size distribution of cities: An examination of the Pareto law and primacy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 165-186, September.
  7. Rose, Andrew K, 2005. "Cities and Countries," CEPR Discussion Papers 5235, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  8. Soo, Kwok Tong, 2005. "Zipf's Law for cities: a cross-country investigation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 239-263, May.
  9. Duncan Black & Vernon Henderson, 2003. "Urban evolution in the USA," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(4), pages 343-372, October.
  10. Quah, Danny, 1993. "Galton's Fallacy and Tests of the Convergence Hypothesis," CEPR Discussion Papers 820, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
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