Real Estate Papers
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
7-2006
Publication Source
Regional Science and Urban Economics
Volume
36
Issue
4
Start Page
542
Last Page
563
DOI
10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2006.03.008
Abstract
This paper embeds the canonical model of endogenous growth with product proliferation developed by Romer [Romer, P.M., 1990. Endogenous technical change. Journal of Political Economy 98, S71–S102] into a simple urban framework. This yields a reduced form isomorphic to the popular statistical device developed by Simon [Simon, H., 1955. On a class of skew distribution functions. Biometrika 42, 425–440], which in turn can yield Zipf's law for cities. The stochastic outcomes of purposeful innovation and local spillovers can thus serve as foundations for random growth models.
Copyright/Permission Statement
© 2006. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Keywords
city size distribution, Zipf's law, endogenous growth, Simon's model
Recommended Citation
Duranton, G. (2006). Some Foundations for Zipf's Law: Product Proliferation and Local Spillovers. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 36 (4), 542-563. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2006.03.008
Date Posted: 27 November 2017
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
The postprint version of this article, Some economics for Zipf’s law: Romer and Simon unified, was published in its final version as Some foundations for Zipf's law: Product proliferation and local spillovers.