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Is the Zipf law spurious in explaining city-size distributions?

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  • Gan, Li
  • Li, Dong
  • Song, Shunfeng

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  • Gan, Li & Li, Dong & Song, Shunfeng, 2006. "Is the Zipf law spurious in explaining city-size distributions?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 256-262, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:92:y:2006:i:2:p:256-262
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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. Phillips, P.C.B., 1986. "Understanding spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 311-340, December.
    3. Xavier Gabaix, 1999. "Zipf's Law for Cities: An Explanation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 739-767.
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    Cited by:

    1. Michel DIMOU & Alexandra SCHAFFAR & Zhihong CHEN & Shihe FU, 2008. "LA CROISSANCE URBAINE CHINOISE RECONSIDeReE," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 27, pages 109-131.
    2. Kristian GIESEN & Jens SÜDEKUM, 2012. "The French Overall City Size Distribution," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 36, pages 107-126.
    3. Chen, Yanguang, 2021. "Exploring the level of urbanization based on Zipf’s scaling exponent," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 566(C).
    4. Sebastien TERRA, 2009. "Zipf's Law for Cities: On a New Testing Procedure," Working Papers 200920, CERDI.
    5. Chen, Zhihong & Fu, Shihe & Zhang, Dayong, 2010. "Searching for the parallel growth of cities," MPRA Paper 21528, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Montebruno, Piero & Bennett, Robert J. & van Lieshout, Carry & Smith, Harry, 2019. "A tale of two tails: Do Power Law and Lognormal models fit firm-size distributions in the mid-Victorian era?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 523(C), pages 858-875.
    7. Gilberto Seravalli, 2016. "Dimensioni e crescita delle citt? in Europa: l?incertezza danneggia soprattutto le citt? medie," SCIENZE REGIONALI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 91-108.
    8. 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.
    9. Hasan Engin Duran & Andrzej Cieślik, 2021. "The distribution of city sizes in Turkey: A failure of Zipf’s law due to concavity," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(5), pages 1702-1719, October.
    10. Angelina Hackmann & Torben Klarl, 2020. "The evolution of Zipf's Law for U.S. cities," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(3), pages 841-852, June.
    11. Kristian Giesen & Jens Südekum, 2011. "Zipf's law for cities in the regions and the country," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(4), pages 667-686, July.
    12. P. Nijkamp & A. Reggiani, 2012. "Did Zipf Anticipate Socio-Economic Spatial Networks?," Working Papers wp816, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    13. Aura Reggiani & Peter Nijkamp, 2015. "Did Zipf Anticipate Spatial Connectivity Structures?," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 42(3), pages 468-489, June.
    14. Zelai Xu & Nong Zhu, 2009. "City Size Distribution in China: Are Large Cities Dominant?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(10), pages 2159-2185, September.
    15. Dimitrios TSIOTAS, 2016. "City-Size Or Rank-Size Distribution? An Empirical Analysis On Greek Urban Populations," Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 11(4), pages 5-16, November.
    16. Boris Portnov, 2011. "Does Zipf’s law hold for primate cities? Some evidence from a discriminant analysis of world countries," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 31(2), pages 113-129, October.
    17. Rolf Bergs, 2018. "The detection of natural cities in the Netherlands—Nocturnal satellite imagery and Zipf’s law [Die Abgrenzung natürlicher Städte in den Niederlanden: Nachtsatellitenbilder und das Zipf-Gesetz]," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 38(2), pages 111-140, October.
    18. Alex Coad, 2009. "On the distribution of product price and quality," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 589-604, August.
    19. Adele Sateriano & Giovanni Quaranta & Rosanna Salvia & Francisco Escrivà Saneugenio & Alvaro Marucci & Luca Salvati & Barbara Zagaglia & Francesco Chelli, 2024. "Envisaging the Intrinsic Departure from Zipf’s Law as an Indicator of Economic Concentration along Urban–Rural Gradients," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-15, March.
    20. Zelai Xu & Nong Zhu, 2014. "City size distribution in China: are large cities dominant?," CIRANO Working Papers 2014s-04, CIRANO.
    21. Kyung-Min Nam, 2017. "Is spatial distribution of China’s population excessively unequal? A cross-country comparison," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 59(2), pages 453-474, September.
    22. Yang Li & Hua Shao & Nan Jiang & Ge Shi & Xin Cheng, 2018. "The Evolution of the Urban Spatial Pattern in the Yangtze River Economic Belt: Based on Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-21, August.
    23. Josic Hrvoje & Bašić Maja, 2018. "Reconsidering Zipf’s law for regional development: The case of settlements and cities in Croatia," Miscellanea Geographica. Regional Studies on Development, Sciendo, vol. 22(1), pages 22-30, March.

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