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Size distribution of U.S. lower tail cities

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  • Devadoss, Stephen
  • Luckstead, Jeff

Abstract

Studies that analyzed the size distribution of U.S. cities have mainly focused on the upper tail and showed that these cities adhere to Zipf’s law. However, even though a large number of cities are in the lower tail, very few studies have examined the distribution of these small cities because of data limitations. We apply reverse Pareto and reverse general Pareto distributions to analyze U.S. lower tail cities. Our results show the power law behavior of lower tail U.S. cities is accurately represented by both the reverse Pareto and general Pareto.

Suggested Citation

  • Devadoss, Stephen & Luckstead, Jeff, 2016. "Size distribution of U.S. lower tail cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 444(C), pages 158-162.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:444:y:2016:i:c:p:158-162
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2015.09.077
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December.
    2. Luckstead, Jeff & Devadoss, Stephen, 2014. "Do the world’s largest cities follow Zipf’s and Gibrat’s laws?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 182-186.
    3. Devadoss, Stephen & Luckstead, Jeff & Danforth, Diana & Akhundjanov, Sherzod, 2016. "The power law distribution for lower tail cities in India," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 442(C), pages 193-196.
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    Cited by:

    1. Safari, Muhammad Aslam Mohd & Masseran, Nurulkamal & Ibrahim, Kamarulzaman & AL-Dhurafi, Nasr Ahmed, 2020. "The power-law distribution for the income of poor households," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 557(C).
    2. Kwong, Hok Shing & Nadarajah, Saralees, 2019. "A note on “Pareto tails and lognormal body of US cities size distribution”," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 513(C), pages 55-62.
    3. Akhundjanov, Sherzod B. & Devadoss, Stephen & Luckstead, Jeff, 2017. "Size distribution of national CO2 emissions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 182-193.
    4. Milian Bachem & Lerby Ergun & Casper de Vries, 2021. "Covariates Hiding in the Tails," Staff Working Papers 21-45, Bank of Canada.
    5. Dimitrios TSIOTAS, 2016. "City-Size Or Rank-Size Distribution? An Empirical Analysis On Greek Urban Populations," Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 11(4), pages 5-16, November.
    6. Ignacio Rosal, 2018. "Power laws in EU country exports," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 45(2), pages 311-337, May.
    7. Safari, Muhammad Aslam Mohd & Masseran, Nurulkamal & Ibrahim, Kamarulzaman & Hussain, Saiful Izzuan, 2021. "Measuring income inequality: A robust semi-parametric approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 562(C).
    8. Safari, Muhammad Aslam Mohd & Masseran, Nurulkamal & Ibrahim, Kamarulzaman & Hussain, Saiful Izzuan, 2019. "A robust and efficient estimator for the tail index of inverse Pareto distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 517(C), pages 431-439.

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