City Size Distributions and Economic Development: Is There a Certain Pattern?
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| Title | City Size Distributions and Economic Development: Is There a Certain Pattern?
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| Author | Lu Yang |
| Organization | Chinese Academy of Social Sciences，CASS |
| Email | luyang2002@cass.org.cn |
| Key Words | rank-size distribution; primacy distribution; economic development; population density |
| Abstract | We reexamine the relationship between the city size distribution and economic development of a country by using a new data set provided by Thomas Brinkhoff. We have made use of data on 118 countries in two census periods. The primacy index constructed by EL-Shakhs (1972) and traditional index are employed as the measure of concentration among cities of different size. The empirical results allow us to confirm there is an inverted-U shape between per capita of income and primacy index. There is a positive relationship between the primacy index and the economic development in the low income countries. However, there is a negative relationship between the two variables in high income countries. This paper also suggests that the central place theory has dominated influence to the city size distribution. Scale and agglomeration economies in production promote urban concentration while land rent and higher transport cost foster population dispersal. But urbanization and high degrees of government involvement of a country is not significant in the model. The results indicate that population dispersal will accompany with a country’s development and the population in primacy city of China will be shrinking. However, government involvement may cause distortions in the distribution of population. |
| Serial Number | WP506 |
| Time | 2013-08-01 |
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