An improvement over the normal distribution for log-growth rates of city sizes: Empirical evidence for France, Germany, Italy and Spain

Puente-Ajovin, Miguel and Ramos, Arturo (2015): An improvement over the normal distribution for log-growth rates of city sizes: Empirical evidence for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Abstract

We study the decennial log-growth population rate distributions of France (1990-2009), Germany (1996-2006), Italy (1951-1961, 2001-2011) and Spain (1950-1960, 2001-2010).

It is obtained an excellent parametric description of these log-growth rates by means of a modification of the normal distribution in that the tails are mixed by means of convex linear combinations with exponential distributions, giving rise to the so called “double mixture exponential normal”.

The normal distribution is not the one empirically observed for the same datasets.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: urban log-growth rates distribution, exponential distribution, normal distribution, European population log-growth rates
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics > C46 - Specific Distributions ; Specific Statistics; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R1 - General Regional Economics > R11 - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R1 - General Regional Economics > R12 - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity

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