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Title: Understanding the Fractal Pattern of City Sizes: A Location Demand Theory

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: The distribution of the population of cities in the United States has a fat tail. I show that this pattern extends to cities in smaller geographic areas such as Census regions, divisions, and states, indicating a fractal nature. To explain this phenomenon, I propose a location-demand-based theory in which people have heterogeneous geographic attachment. I illustrate the mechanism with a toy model and then estimate an empirical location demand model with this feature. The quantitative model matches key features of migration data and has the ability to generate the observed tail distribution. An implication of the theory is that the elasticity of population to shocks or policies is larger in bigger cities.

Url: https://glhoward.github.io/greghoward.org/Fractals.pdf

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Authors: Howard, Greg

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Housing and Segregation, Migration and Immigration

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