A scale-free transportation network explains the city-size distribution

Artikel

Zipf's law is one of the best known empirical regularities in urban economics. There is extensive research on the subject, where each city is treated symmetrically in terms of the cost of transactions with other cities. Recent developments in network theory facilitate the examination of an asymmetric transport network. In a scale-free network, the chance of observing extremes in network connections becomes higher than the Gaussian distribution predicts and, therefore, it explains the emergence of large clusters. The city-size distribution shares the same pattern. This paper decodes how accessibility of a city to other cities on the transportation network can boost its local economy and explains the city-size distribution as a result of its underlying transportation network structure. We confirm our model predictions with US and Belgian data. Finally, we discuss the endogenous evolution of transport networks.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Journal: Quantitative Economics ; ISSN: 1759-7331 ; Volume: 9 ; Year: 2018 ; Issue: 3 ; Pages: 1419-1451 ; New Haven, CT: The Econometric Society

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation; Networks ; Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity ; Transportation Economics: General
• Subject: Zipf's law ; city-size distribution ; scale-free network

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Berliant, Marcus ; Watanabe, Axel H.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The Econometric Society
• (where): New Haven, CT
• (when): 2018

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.3982/QE619
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/217132
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET