IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tou/journl/v36y2012p79-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does The Choice Of Geographic Units Matter For The Validation Of Gibrat'S Law?

Author

Listed:
  • Boris A. PORTNOV

    (Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, University of Haifa, Israel)

Abstract

As we hypothesize, the selection of observation units may become a critical consideration for an empirical investigation of Gibrat’s Law, according to which the growth of cities is expected to be independent of their sizes. In order to verify this hypothesis, we investigate whether the validation of Gibrat’s law may depend on the aerial units used for the analysis i.e., individual localities vs. integrated urban areas. The present study examines that possibility, using 1990-2000 population growth data for two levels of geographic resolution 4,667 local administrative units (i.e., municipalities) and 2189 contiguous urban areas in 40 European countries. According to our findings, the association between population size and growth tend to differ across subsets of localities, being positive across localities with fewer location advantages and negative elsewhere. As a result, the strength and direction of the ‘growth-size’ association may change, depending on the relative shares of location subsets used for aggregation.

Suggested Citation

  • Boris A. PORTNOV, 2012. "Does The Choice Of Geographic Units Matter For The Validation Of Gibrat'S Law?," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 36, pages 79-106.
    • Handle: RePEc:tou:journl:v:36:y:2012:p:79-106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://regionetdeveloppement.univ-tln.fr/wp-content/uploads/5_Portnov.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December.
    2. Gotway C.A. & Young L.J., 2002. "Combining Incompatible Spatial Data," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 97, pages 632-648, June.
    3. Mario Polèse & Richard Shearmur, 2006. "Growth and Location of Economic Activity: The Spatial Dynamics of Industries in Canada 1971–2001," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3), pages 362-395, September.
    4. Paul Cheshire & Stefano Magrini, 2006. "Population growth in European cities: Weather matters - but only nationally," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 23-37.
    5. G Duranton, 1999. "Distance, Land, and Proximity: Economic Analysis and the Evolution of Cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(12), pages 2169-2188, December.
    6. Alberto F. Ades & Edward L. Glaeser, 1995. "Trade and Circuses: Explaining Urban Giants," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 195-227.
    7. Boris Portnov & Moshe Schwartz, 2008. "On the Relativity of Urban Location," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(4), pages 605-615.
    8. Rose, Andrew, 2005. "Cities and Countries," CEPR Discussion Papers 5235, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Boris A. Portnov & Moshe Schwartz, 2009. "Urban Clusters As Growth Foci," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 287-310, May.
    10. Ioannides, Yannis M. & Overman, Henry G., 2003. "Zipf's law for cities: an empirical examination," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 127-137, March.
    11. Duncan Black & Vernon Henderson, 2003. "Urban evolution in the USA," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(4), pages 343-372, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Natalya Rybnikova & Boris Portnov, 2015. "Using light-at-night (LAN) satellite data for identifying clusters of economic activities in Europe," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 307-334, November.

    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. Boris A. Portnov, 2011. "The Change of Support Problem (COSP) and its Implications for Urban Analysis: Some Evidence from a Study of the European Urban System," ERSA conference papers ersa10p106, European Regional Science Association.
    2. Boris Portnov & Ben Reiser & Moshe Schwartz, 2012. "Does Gibrat’s law for cities hold when location counts?," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(1), pages 151-178, February.
    3. González-Val, Rafael & Lanaspa, Luis & Sanz, Fernando, 2008. "New Evidence on Gibrat’s Law for Cities," MPRA Paper 10411, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. 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.
    5. Rafael González-Val & Marcos Sanso-Navarro, 2010. "Gibrat’s law for countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(4), pages 1371-1389, September.
    6. Boris A. Portnov & Moshe Schwartz, 2009. "Urban Clusters As Growth Foci," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 287-310, May.
    7. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    8. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2023. "Urban Growth and Its Aggregate Implications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(6), pages 2219-2259, November.
    9. González-Val, Rafael & Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2010. "On the best functions to describe city size distributions," MPRA Paper 21921, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Kyung-Min Nam & John M. Reilly, 2013. "City Size Distribution as a Function of Socioeconomic Conditions: An Eclectic Approach to Downscaling Global Population," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(1), pages 208-225, January.
    11. Rafael González-Val, 2011. "Deviations from Zipf’s Law for American Cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(5), pages 1017-1035, April.
    12. Rafael González-Val & Luis Lanaspa & Fernando Sanz-Gracia, 2014. "New Evidence on Gibrat’s Law for Cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(1), pages 93-115, January.
    13. Rafael Gonz�lez-Val & Luis Lanaspa, 2016. "Patterns in US Urban Growth, 1790-2000," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 289-309, February.
    14. Chengri Ding & Zhi Li, 2019. "Size and urban growth of Chinese cities during the era of transformation toward a market economy," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(1), pages 27-46, January.
    15. Goerlich, Francisco José & Mas, Matilde, 2008. "Los motores de la aglomeración en España: geografía versus historia," MPRA Paper 15797, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2008.
    16. González-Val, Rafael, 2007. "The evolution of the US urban structure from a long-run perspective (1900-2000)," MPRA Paper 9732, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Klein, Alexander & Leunig, Tim, 2013. "Gibrat’s Law and the British Industrial Revolution," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 146, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    18. Rafael González-Val, 2012. "A Nonparametric Estimation of the Local Zipf Exponent for all US Cities," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 39(6), pages 1119-1130, December.
    19. Rafael González‐Val, 2019. "Historical urban growth in Europe (1300–1800)," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 98(2), pages 1115-1136, April.
    20. Soo, Kwok Tong, 2005. "Zipf's Law for cities: a cross-country investigation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 239-263, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    POPULATION GROWTH; EUROPEAN URBAN SYSTEM; LOCATIONAL SUBSETS; LOCATIONAL ATTRIBUTES; GIBRAT'S LAW; URBAN AREAS; LOCAL ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    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:tou:journl:v:36:y:2012:p:79-106. 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: Christophe Van Huffel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/letlnfr.html .

    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.