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

abstract

• The Zipf law, which states that that the rank associated with some size S is proportional to S to some negative power, is a regularity observed in natural and social sciences. One popular application of the Zipf law is the relationship between city sizes and their ranks. This paper examines the rank-size relationship through Monte Carlo simulations and two examples. We show that a good fit (indicated by a high R2 value) can be found for many statistical distributions. The Zipf law's good fit is a statistical phenomenon, and therefore, it does not require an economic theory that determines city-size distributions. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

authors

• Gan, Li

published proceedings

• ECONOMICS LETTERS

altmetric score

• 3

author list (cited authors)

• Gan, L. i., Li, D., & Song, S.

citation count

• 48

complete list of authors

• Gan, Li||Li, Dong||Song, Shunfeng

publication date

• January 2006

publisher

• Elsevier  Publisher

published in

• Economics Letters  Journal

keywords

• Rank-size
• Spurious
• Zipf Law

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1016/j.econlet.2006.03.004

start page

• 256

end page

• 262

volume

• 92

issue

• 2

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2006.03.004