Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, implied by the existence of cities, and aggregate constant returns, implied by balanced growth. To address this tension, we develop a general equilibrium theory of economic growth in an urban environment. In our theory, variation in the urban structure through the growth, birth, and death of cities is the margin that eliminates local increasing returns to yield constant returns to scale in the aggregate. We show that, consistent with the data, the theory produces a city size distribution that is well approximated by Zipf’s law, but that also displays the observed systematic underrepresentation of both very small and very large cities. Using our...
Cities are entities that are not “simple” but “complexly organized”. Theories about geographical st...
Economic theories of systems of cities explain why production and consumption activities are concent...
International audienceWe consider an economy with three cities producing different outputs. Two citi...
Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, im...
Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, im...
We review the accumulated knowledge on city size distributions and determinants of urban growth. Thi...
We review the accumulated knowledge on city size distributions and determinants of urban growth. Thi...
The size distribution of cities in many countries follows some broadly regular patterns. Any good th...
The size distribution of cities in many countries follows some broadly regular patterns. Any good th...
This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the distribution of GDP at city level (h...
The methodology used by theories to explain the size distribution of cities is contrived in that it ...
International audienceThe aim of this paper is to present some recent theoretical developments on ur...
We criticize the theories used to explain the size distribution of cities. They take an empirical fa...
City-size distributions follow a Pareto distribution, a property which is also known as the rank-siz...
We criticize the theories used to explain the size distribution of cities. They take an empirical fa...
Cities are entities that are not “simple” but “complexly organized”. Theories about geographical st...
Economic theories of systems of cities explain why production and consumption activities are concent...
International audienceWe consider an economy with three cities producing different outputs. Two citi...
Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, im...
Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, im...
We review the accumulated knowledge on city size distributions and determinants of urban growth. Thi...
We review the accumulated knowledge on city size distributions and determinants of urban growth. Thi...
The size distribution of cities in many countries follows some broadly regular patterns. Any good th...
The size distribution of cities in many countries follows some broadly regular patterns. Any good th...
This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the distribution of GDP at city level (h...
The methodology used by theories to explain the size distribution of cities is contrived in that it ...
International audienceThe aim of this paper is to present some recent theoretical developments on ur...
We criticize the theories used to explain the size distribution of cities. They take an empirical fa...
City-size distributions follow a Pareto distribution, a property which is also known as the rank-siz...
We criticize the theories used to explain the size distribution of cities. They take an empirical fa...
Cities are entities that are not “simple” but “complexly organized”. Theories about geographical st...
Economic theories of systems of cities explain why production and consumption activities are concent...
International audienceWe consider an economy with three cities producing different outputs. Two citi...