This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data


[ Papers | Articles | Software | Books | Chapters | Authors | Institutions | JEL Classification | NEP reports | Search | New papers by email | Author registration | Rankings | Volunteers | FAQ | Blog | Help! ]

Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities: A Rejoinder

Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics
Author Info
Yannis M. Ioannides
Spyros Skouras

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Abstract

We establish that the debate between Eeckhout (2004; 2009) and Levy (2009) has still not resolved the key issue of whether the distribution of large US urban places in 2000 is consistent with a lognormal for the intire size range. We resolve this by introducing a new distribution function which switches between a lognormal and a power distribution and estimating it with the data used by Eeckhout and Levy (2009). We find that there is a sudden transition from lognormality to power behavior as city populations icrease above sudden transition from lognormality to power behavior as city populations increase above 100,000. Gibrat's law holds for most cities but a power law holds for most of the population.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://ase.tufts.edu/econ/research/documents/2009/ioannidesGibratsLaw.pdf
File Format: application/pdf
File Function:
Download Restriction: no

Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, Tufts University in its series Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University with number 0740.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0740

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Medford, MA 02155, USA
Phone: (617) 627-3560
Fax: (617) 627-3917
Web page: http://ase.tufts.edu/econ

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Caroline Kalogeropoulos).

Related research
Keywords: Gibrat's Law; Zipf's law; upper tail; mixture of distributions; switching regressions; urban evolution; urban heirarchy;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General
D51 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Exchange and Production Economies
J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
C24 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

Statistics
Access and download statistics

Did you know? IDEAS uses the data collected within the RePEc project, the largest online bibliographic database in Economics.

This page was last updated on 2009-11-18.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.