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How sensitive is city size distribution to the definition of city? The case of Spain

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  • Puente-Ajovín, Miguel
  • Ramos, Arturo
  • Sanz-Gracia, Fernando
  • Arribas-Bel, Daniel

Abstract

In this paper we want to test whether the choice of different types of urban data for the same country exerts an influence or not on the selection of the best parametric density function (among the Pareto, truncated lognormal, the double Pareto lognormal and mixtures of lognormals) to describe the city size distribution. We have employed four different definitions of city for Spain. We have concluded that the outperforming density is different for each type of data.

Suggested Citation

  • Puente-Ajovín, Miguel & Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando & Arribas-Bel, Daniel, 2020. "How sensitive is city size distribution to the definition of city? The case of Spain," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:197:y:2020:i:c:s0165176520304031
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109643
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Arribas-Bel, Daniel & Garcia-López, M.-À. & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2021. "Building(s and) cities: Delineating urban areas with a machine learning algorithm," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    2. 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.
    3. Galdo, Virgilio & Li, Yue & Rama, Martin, 2021. "Identifying urban areas by combining human judgment and machine learning: An application to India," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    4. Ioannides, Yannis & Skouras, Spyros, 2013. "US city size distribution: Robustly Pareto, but only in the tail," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 18-29.
    5. 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.
    6. Miguel Puente-Ajovín & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia, 2020. "Is there a universal parametric city size distribution? Empirical evidence for 70 countries," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 65(3), pages 727-741, December.
    7. 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.
    8. Reed, William J., 2003. "The Pareto law of incomes—an explanation and an extension," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 319(C), pages 469-486.
    9. Giesen, Kristian & Zimmermann, Arndt & Suedekum, Jens, 2010. "The size distribution across all cities - Double Pareto lognormal strikes," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 129-137, September.
    10. 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.
    11. William J. Reed, 2002. "On the Rank‐Size Distribution for Human Settlements," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 1-17, February.
    12. Bee, Marco & Riccaboni, Massimo & Schiavo, Stefano, 2013. "The size distribution of US cities: Not Pareto, even in the tail," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 232-237.
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    Cited by:

    1. Peña, Guillermo & Puente-Ajovín, Miguel & Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2022. "Log-growth rates of CO2: An empirical analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 588(C).
    2. Băncescu, Irina & Chivu, Luminiţa & Massing, Till & Preda, Vasile & Puente-Ajovín, Miguel & Ramos, Arturo, 2024. "On the parametric description of log-growth rates of Romanian city sizes," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 643(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pareto distribution; Lognormal distribution; Double Pareto lognormal; Mixtures; Cities; Spain;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • C16 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Econometric and Statistical Methods; Specific Distributions
    • R1 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics

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