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Book/Printed Material Urban structure and growth

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About this Item

Title

  • Urban structure and growth

Summary

  • "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 theory of economic growth in an urban environment. We show that the urban structure is the margin that eliminates local increasing returns to yield constant returns to scale in the aggregate, which is sufficient to deliver balanced growth. In a multi-sector economy with specific factors and productivity shocks, the same mechanism leads to a city size distribution that is well described by a power distribution with coefficient one: Zipf's Law. Under certain assumptions our theory produces Zipf's Law exactly. More generally, it produces the systematic deviations from Zipf's Law observed in the data, including the under-representation of small cities and the absence of very large ones. In general, the model identifies the standard deviation of industry productivity shocks as the key parameter determining dispersion in the city size distribution. We present evidence that the relationship between the dispersion of city sizes and the variance of productivity shocks is consistent with the data"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

Names

  • Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban
  • Wright, Mark L. J.
  • National Bureau of Economic Research

Created / Published

  • Cambridge, MA : National Bureau of Economic Research, c2005.

Headings

  • -  Cities and towns--Growth--Mathematical models
  • -  Urban economics--Mathematical models
  • -  Urbanization--Mathematical models

Notes

  • -  Title from PDF file as viewed on 5/3/2005.
  • -  Includes bibliographical references.
  • -  Also available in print.
  • -  Mode of access: World Wide Web.
  • -  System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Call Number/Physical Location

  • HB1

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 2005617845

Access Advisory

  • Unrestricted online access

Online Format

  • image
  • pdf

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban, Mark L. J Wright, and National Bureau Of Economic Research. Urban Structure and Growth. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005. Pdf. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/2005617845/.

APA citation style:

Rossi-Hansberg, E., Wright, M. L. J. & National Bureau Of Economic Research. (2005) Urban Structure and Growth. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/2005617845/.

MLA citation style:

Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban, Mark L. J Wright, and National Bureau Of Economic Research. Urban Structure and Growth. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <aj.sunback.homes/item/2005617845/>.