In this paper, we propose an analytical and methodological comparison between two of the most known distance-based methods in the evaluation of the geographic concentration of economic activity. These two methods are Ripley's K function, a cumulative function popularised by Marcon and Puech...

This paper analyses in detail the features offered by a function which is practically new to Urban Economics, the q-exponential, in describing city size distributions. We highlight two contributions. First, we propose a new and simple procedure for estimating their parameters. Second, and more...

Several authors (Berry 1970, Krugman 1996 or Eaton and Eckstein 1997, among many others) have experienced amazement about the accurate functioning of the law of "least effort" established by Zipf (1949) in most places. Cities, ranked by population, seem to follow almost exactly a log/log...

We analyze the first data set on consistently defined functional urban areas in Europe and compare the European to the US urban system. City sizes in Europe do not follow a power law: the largest cities are "too small" to follow Zipf's law.

The urban structures between the Member States of the European Union is very different for historical, geographical, economic reasons. However, the population is spread across geographic areas in a way that, although continuously changing, is not possible to define as random. Indeed, countries...