This paper is about the city size and growth rate distributions as seen from the perspectives of Zipf's and Gibrat's law. We demonstrate that the Gibrat and Zipf views are theoretically incompatible in view of the Fisher-Tippett theorem, and show that the conflicting hypotheses about the size...

Strong evidence indicates that in most countries cities tend to develop sequentially, with the initially largest cities growing first. This paper presents a model of city growth that rationalizes this pattern. Increasing returns to scale constitute the force that favors agglomeration of...

The salient rank-size rule known as Zipf's law is not only satisfied for Germany's national urban hierarchy, but also for the city size distributions in single German regions. To analyze this phenomenon, we build on the insights by Gabaix (1999) that Zipf's law follows from a stochastic growth...

Using two comprehensive datasets on population of cities (1800-2000) and metropolitan areas (1960-2000) for a large set of countries, I present three new empirical facts about the evolution of city growth. First, the distribution of cities growth rates is skewed to the right in most countries...

This paper performs a test of Zipf's Law (the size distribution of cities follows a Pareto distribution with shape parameter equal to 1) using data for Malaysian cities from five population censuses (1957, 1970, 1980, 1991 and 2000). We reject Zipf's Law for all periods except 1957, in favour of...

We use data for metro areas in the United States, from the US Census for 1900 - 1990, to test the validity of Zipf's Law for cities. Previous investigations are restricted to regressions of log size against log rank. In contrast, we use a nonparametric procedure to calculate local Zipf exponents...

We use data for metro areas in the United States, from the US Census for 1900 û 1990, to test the validity of Zipf''s Law for cities. Previous investigations are restricted to regressions of log size against log rank. In contrast, we use a nonparametric procedure to calculate local Zipf...

During the last decade, many authors have focused on urban growth dynamics. Some authors claim that urban growth follows a random walk process, while some others consider that it is rather a deterministic process depending upon city-size. Most empirical works deliver evidence on the nature of...

Multiplicative models of firm dynamics á la Gibrat have become a standard reference in industrial organization. However, some unpleasant properties of their implied dynamics - namely, their explosive or implosive behaviour (firm size and number collapsing to zero or increasing indefinitely) -...

We report several characteristics of industrial dynamics, including the firm size distribution, Gibrat's Law, and also the distribution of growth rates and their autocorrelation. We use a variety of econometric techniques, looking first at the aggregate and subsequently at a sectoral level. Many...