ABS&Comment: Gabaix, Zipf's law for cities: an explanation

[Gretchen Whitney]

Author's e-mail: xgabaix at MIT.EDU

TITLE:          Zipf's law for cities: An explanation
AUTHOR: Gabaix X
JOURNAL:        QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, 114: (3) 739-767 AUG 1999
Document type: Article
Language: English

Abstract:
Zipf's law is a very tight constraint on the class of admissible models of
local growth. It says that for most countries the size distribution of
cities strikingly fits a power law: the number of cities with populations
greater than S is proportional to 1/S. Suppose that, at least in the upper
tail, all cities follow some proportional growth process (this appears to be
verified empirically). This automatically leads their distribution to
converge to Zipf's law.

KeyWords Plus:
SIZE DISTRIBUTION, ECONOMIES, GROWTH

Addresses:
Gabaix X, MIT, Dept Econ, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.
MIT, Dept Econ, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.

Publisher:
M I T PRESS, CAMBRIDGE

IDS Number:
227DP

ISSN:
0033-5533

copyright INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION, 1999
Please visit their website at www.isinet.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENT:

This is an extremely interesting paper and I was reminded of Derek deSolla
Price's work on research cities which is discussed in Price's book, "Little
Science, Big Science... and Beyond" in the chapter entitled  Galton
Revisited, pages 51 and 52.

It also reminded me of a paper by H. Inhaber, "Scientific Cities" published
in Research Policy, 3(2) 182-200, 1974.



-------------------------------------------------------------
Eugene Garfield, Ph.D.
Chairman Emeritus, ISI, 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Publisher, THE SCIENTIST, 3600 Market St,
Philadelphia, PA 19104 (www.the-scientist.com)
Tel: 215-243-2205 // Fax: 215-387-1266
email:  garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
The Scientist: http://www.the-scientist.com
Home Page: http://garfield.library.upenn.edu



-------------------------------------------------------------