IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v36y1999i8p1269-1281.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analysing Mexican Population Concentration: A Model with Empirical Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Farhad Dehghan

    (Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Platteville, Wisconsin 53818 U.S.A., Dehghan@am.uwplatt.edu)

  • Guillermo Vargas Uribe

    (Department of Economics, University of Michoacan, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, gvargas@zeus.ccu.umich.mx)

Abstract

In this study, we analyse the economic determinants of population concentration in Mexico, estimating a time-series/cross-sectional model for 1895-1990 in which the Pareto coefficient is a measure of population concentration. The fundamental lesson of this paper is that there is a clear and unequivocal U-shaped pattern between population concentration and economic development. This finding was not confirmed in cross-national studies. Our results are consistent with central-place theory and suggest that as development proceeds, agglomeration benefits of large cities are exhausted and the optimum level of production is exceeded. Hence, government policies aimed at encouraging decentralisation may not interfere with economic growth and efficiency. Our findings point to the significant non-linear relationship between population concentration and a number of variables in the model including total population, urbanisation ratio, total land area, population density and central government expenditure. The significance of the central government expenditure coefficient in most versions of the model indicates that this variable plays an important role in shaping the city-size distribution in Mexico.

Suggested Citation

  • Farhad Dehghan & Guillermo Vargas Uribe, 1999. "Analysing Mexican Population Concentration: A Model with Empirical Evidence," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 36(8), pages 1269-1281, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:36:y:1999:i:8:p:1269-1281
    DOI: 10.1080/0042098992980
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098992980
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0042098992980?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alperovich, Gershon, 1982. "Scale economies and diseconomies in the determination of city size distribution," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 202-213, September.
    2. repec:ucp:ecdecc:v:21:y:1973:i:2:p:309-24 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:ucp:ecdecc:v:41:y:1992:i:1:p:63-74 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. 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.
    5. Parr, John B., 1985. "A note on the size distribution of cities over time," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 199-212, September.
    6. repec:ucp:ecdecc:v:30:y:1981:i:1:p:17-30 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Johnson, S. R. & Kau, James B., 1980. "Urban spatial structure: An analysis with a varying coefficient model," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 141-154, March.
    8. repec:ucp:ecdecc:v:37:y:1989:i:3:p:611-39 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Edwin S. Mills & Michael R. Lav, 1964. "A Model of Market Areas with Free Entry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(3), pages 278-278.
    10. Adelman, M A, 1969. "Comment on the "H" Concentration Measure as a Numbers-Equivalent," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(1), pages 99-101, February.
    11. William Alonso, 1971. "The Economics Of Urban Size†," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 67-83, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gershon Alperovich, 1993. "An Explanatory Model of City-size Distribution: Evidence from Cross-country Data," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 30(9), pages 1591-1601, November.
    2. George C. Petrakos, 1992. "Urban Concentration and Agglomeration Economies: Re-examining the Relationship," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 29(8), pages 1219-1229, December.
    3. Kim, Ho Yeon, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy," IDE Discussion Papers 360, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    4. Alexandra SCHAFFAR & Sotiris PAVLEAS, 2014. "The Evolution Of The Greek Urban Centers: 1951-2011," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 39, pages 87-104.
    5. Gordon F. Mulligan, 1984. "Agglomeration and Central Place Theory: A Review of the Literature," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 9(1), pages 1-42, September.
    6. Chen, Zhihong & Fu, Shihe & Zhang, Dayong, 2010. "Searching for the parallel growth of cities," MPRA Paper 21528, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Duranton, Gilles, 2002. "City Size Distributions as a Consequence of the Growth Process," CEPR Discussion Papers 3577, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Luis Suarez-Villa, 1988. "Metropolitan Evolution, Sectoral Economic Change, and the City Size Distribution," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 25(1), pages 1-20, February.
    9. Giorgio Fazio & Marco Modica, 2015. "Pareto Or Log-Normal? Best Fit And Truncation In The Distribution Of All Cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(5), pages 736-756, November.
    10. Tomoya Mori & Tony E. Smith, 2009. "A Reconsideration of the NAS Rule from an Industrial Agglomeration Perspective," KIER Working Papers 669, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    11. L. Benguigui & E. Blumenfeld-Lieberthal, 2011. "The end of a paradigm: is Zipf’s law universal?," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 87-100, March.
    12. Ricardo Machado Ruiz, 2004. "As Estruturas Urbano-Regionais Do Brasil E Estados Unidos Comparadas: Um Estudo Exploratório," Anais do XI Semin·rio sobre a Economia Mineira [Proceedings of the 11th Seminar on the Economy of Minas Gerais], in: João Antonio de Paula & et alli (ed.),Anais do XI Seminário sobre a Economia Mineira [Proceedings of the 11th Seminar on the Economy of Minas Gerais], Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
    13. Ho Yeon KIM & Petra de Jong & Jan Rouwendal & Aleid Brouwer, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy [Housing preferences and attribute importance among Dutch older adults: a conjoint choice experiment]," ERSA conference papers ersa12p350, European Regional Science Association.
    14. France Guerin-Pace, 1995. "Rank-Size Distribution and the Process of Urban Growth," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 32(3), pages 551-562, April.
    15. Junius, Karsten, 1997. "The determinants of urban concentration," Kiel Working Papers 835, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    16. Maurice CATIN & Saïd HANCHANE & Abdelhak KAMAL, 2008. "URBANISATION, PRIMATIE ET eTAPES DE DeVELOPPEMENT : EXISTE-T-IL UNE COURBE EN CLOCHE ?," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 27, pages 83-108.
    17. Andre Lemelin & Fernando Rubiera-Morollón & Ana Gómez-Loscos, 2016. "Measuring Urban Agglomeration: A Refoundation of the Mean City-Population Size Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 125(2), pages 589-612, January.
    18. Clémentine Cottineau, 2022. "What do analyses of city size distributions have in common?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(3), pages 1439-1463, March.
    19. 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.
    20. Zhihong Chen & Shihe Fu & Dayong Zhang, 2013. "Searching for the Parallel Growth of Cities in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(10), pages 2118-2135, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:36:y:1999:i:8:p:1269-1281. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.