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Gibrat’s law for cities, growth regressions and sample size

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  • González-Val, Rafael
  • Lanaspa, Luis
  • Sanz-Gracia, Fernando

Abstract

This paper uses un-truncated city population data from six countries (the United States, Spain, Italy, France, England and Japan) to illustrate how parametric growth regressions can lead to biased results when testing for Gibrat’s law in city size distributions. The OLS results show non-monotonic behaviours depending on the sample size. Moreover, it is possible to find a critical sample size from which we reject Gibrat’s law.

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File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176512006106
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Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Economics Letters.

Volume (Year): 118 (2013)
Issue (Month): 2 ()
Pages: 367-369

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Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:118:y:2013:i:2:p:367-369
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet

Keywords: Gibrat’s law; City size distribution; Urban growth;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
  • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
  • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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  1. González-Val, Rafael & Lanaspa, Luis & Sanz, Fernando, 2008. "New Evidence on Gibrat’s Law for Cities," MPRA Paper 10411, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Eaton, Jonathan & Eckstein, Zvi, 1997. "Cities and growth: Theory and evidence from France and Japan," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(4-5), pages 443-474, August.
  3. 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.
  4. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December.
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Cited by:

  1. Miguel Puente-Ajovín & Arturo Ramos, 2015. "On the parametric description of the French, German, Italian and Spanish city size distributions," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 54(2), pages 489-509, March.
  2. Lalanne, Aurélie & Zumpe, Martin, 2015. "Gibrat’s law, Zipf’s law and Cointegration," MPRA Paper 67992, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  3. Aurélie LALANNE & Martin ZUMPE, 2015. "Zipf’s law, Gibrat’s law and Cointegration," Cahiers du GREThA 2015-27, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée.
  4. Ramos, Arturo, 2015. "Log-growth distributions of US city sizes and non-Lévy processes," MPRA Paper 66561, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  5. Vieira, Elizabeth S. & Lepori, Benedetto, 2016. "The growth process of higher education institutions and public policies," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 286-298.

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