Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35719 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3928
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
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 process. In particular, Gabaix shows that if the regions follow Gibrat's law, we should observe Zipf at both the regional and the national level. This theory has never been addressed empirically. Using non-parametric techniques we find that Gibrat's law holds in each German region, irrespective of how regions are defined. In other words, Gibrat's law and therefore Zipf's law tend to hold everywhere in space.
Subjects: 
City size distributions
city growth
Zipf's law
Gibrat's law
rank-size rule
JEL: 
R11
O4
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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