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The distribution of urban population and economic activity in the European Union and the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Miguel Puente-Ajovín

    (Universidad de Zaragoza)

  • Marcos Sanso-Navarro

    (Universidad de Zaragoza)

  • María Vera-Cabello

    (Centro Universitario de la Defensa de Zaragoza)

Abstract

This letter compares the distribution of urban population and economic activity in the European Union and the United States. Economic activity, proxied with nighttime lights, is more unevenly distributed than population, especially in the European Union. This reflects that more population does not necessarily imply a higher level of economic activity. Both Zipf’s law and a Pareto distribution are rejected for aggregate nighttime lights within urban extents. Therefore, alternative specifications are required for the distribution of city sizes in terms of economic activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Miguel Puente-Ajovín & Marcos Sanso-Navarro & María Vera-Cabello, 2022. "The distribution of urban population and economic activity in the European Union and the United States," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 517-522, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:lsprsc:v:15:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s12076-022-00309-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s12076-022-00309-5
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
    2. John Gibson, 2021. "Better Night Lights Data, For Longer," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(3), pages 770-791, June.
    3. Schmidheiny, Kurt & Suedekum, Jens, 2015. "The pan-European population distribution across consistently defined functional urban areas," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 10-13.
    4. Gibson, John & Olivia, Susan & Boe-Gibson, Geua & Li, Chao, 2021. "Which night lights data should we use in economics, and where?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. Lewis Dijkstra & Hugo Poelman & Paolo Veneri, 2019. "The EU-OECD definition of a functional urban area," OECD Regional Development Working Papers 2019/11, OECD Publishing.
    6. Arshad, Sidra & Hu, Shougeng & Ashraf, Badar Nadeem, 2018. "Zipf’s law and city size distribution: A survey of the literature and future research agenda," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 492(C), pages 75-92.
    7. Xavier Gabaix & Rustam Ibragimov, 2011. "Rank - 1 / 2: A Simple Way to Improve the OLS Estimation of Tail Exponents," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 24-39, January.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    City size distribution; Zipf’s law; Population; Nighttime lights;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries
    • 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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