On the Distribution of City Sizes

Publicado en

  • Journal of Urban Economics

Resumen

  • The city size distribution in many countries is remarkably well described by a Pareto distribution. We derive conditions that standard urban models must satisfy in order to explain this regularity. We show that under general conditions urban models must have (i) a balanced growth path and (ii) a Pareto distribution for the underlying source of randomness. In particular, one of the following combinations can induce a Pareto distribution of city sizes: (i) preferences for different goods follow reflected random walks, and the elasticity of substitution between goods is 1; or (ii) total factor productivities of different goods follow reflected random walks, and increasing returns are equal across goods.

fecha de publicación

  • 2008

Líneas de investigación

  • Balanced Growth
  • Cities
  • City Size Distribution
  • Multisectorial Models
  • Pareto Distribution Urban Growth
  • Rank-Size Rule
  • Zipf's Law

Página inicial

  • 177

Última página

  • 197

Volumen

  • 63

Issue

  • 1