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New Evidence on Gibrat’s Law for Cities

Author

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

Abstract

The aim of this work is to test empirically the validity of Gibrat’s Law in the growth of cities, using data for all the twentieth century of the complete distribution of cities (without any size restrictions) in three countries: the US, Spain and Italy. On considering the distribution of cities, we find a tendency to divergence. However, this fact does not impede, whether from an empirical or a theoretical point of view, that city size distribution can be adequately approximated with a lognormal distribution. Also, the conclusions which can be obtained as to fulfilment or not of Gibrat’s Law depend, first, on the sample size and, second, on the size of the cities being considered (large or small), which means that the results of any study which does not use all the distribution will be relative.

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  • González-Val, Rafael & Lanaspa, Luis & Sanz, Fernando, 2008. "New Evidence on Gibrat’s Law for Cities," MPRA Paper 10411, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10411
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    Cited by:

    1. M. Modica & A. Reggiani & P. Nijkamp, 2015. "A Comparative Analysis of Gibrat s and Zipf s Law on Urban Population," Working Papers wp1008, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    2. Cura, Robin & Cottineau, Clémentine & Swerts, Elfie & Ignazzi, Cosmo Antonio & Bretagnolle, Anne & Vacchiani-Marcuzzo, Celine & Pumain, Denise, 2017. "The Old and the New: Qualifying City Systems in the World with Classical Models and New Data," SocArXiv pbzn6, Center for Open Science.
    3. Rafael González-Val & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia & María Vera-Cabello, 2015. "Size distributions for all cities: Which one is best?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(1), pages 177-196, March.
    4. Rafael Gonz�lez-Val & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia, 2013. "The accuracy of graphs to describe size distributions," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(17), pages 1580-1585, November.
    5. Stijn Ronsse & Samuel Standaert, 2017. "Combining growth and level data: An estimation of the population of Belgian municipalities between 1880 and 1970," Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(4), pages 218-226, October.
    6. Stijn Ronsse & Samuel Standaert, 2017. "Combining growth and level data: an estimation of the population of Belgian cities between 1880 and 1970," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 17/927, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    7. Guy Michaels & Ferdinand Rauch & Stephen J. Redding, 2012. "Urbanization and Structural Transformation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 535-586.
    8. Vanessa Grüdtner & André M. Marques, 2020. "Is Gibrat's law robust when cities interact each other?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(4), pages 1087-1111, August.
    9. Rafael Gonz�lez-Val & Luis Lanaspa, 2016. "Patterns in US Urban Growth, 1790-2000," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 289-309, February.
    10. González-Val, Rafael & Lanaspa, Luis & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2013. "Gibrat’s law for cities, growth regressions and sample size," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 367-369.
    11. Marco Modica, 2014. "Does the EU have homogeneous urban structure area? The role of agglomeration and the impact of shocks on urban structure," ERSA conference papers ersa14p229, European Regional Science Association.
    12. Alen Host & Vinko Zaninoviæ & Petra Adelajda Mirkoviæ, 2018. "Firm-level intra-industry links in Croatia’s tourism industry," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 36(1), pages 243-262.

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    Keywords

    Gibrat’s Law; city size distribution; urban growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General

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