THE EVOLUTION OF U.S. CITY SIZE DISTRIBUTION FROM A LONG-TERM PERSPECTIVE (1900-2000)*
利用涵盖所有城市的新数据库，检验了20世纪美国城市规模分布中齐普夫定律和吉布拉定律的适用性，发现吉布拉定律弱成立，而齐普夫定律仅在样本限制于大城市时成立。
ABSTRACT This paper analyses the evolution of city size distribution in the United States throughout the twentieth century. It tests the validity of two empirical regularities studied in urban economics: Zipf's law (the rank-size rule), and Gibrat's law, or the law of proportionate growth. The main contribution of this work is the use of a new database with information on all the cities (understood as incorporated places), without size restrictions. Our results enable us to confirm that Gibrat's law holds (weakly), and that Zipf's law holds only if the sample is sufficiently restricted at the top, not for a larger sample.