We provide new insights on the city size distribution of countries around the world. Using geo-spatial data and a globally consistent city identification scheme, our data set contains 13,844 cities in 194 countries. City size is measured both in terms of population and night time lights proxying for local economic activity. We find that Zipf's law holds for many, but not all, countries in terms of population, while city size in terms of light is distributed more unequally. These deviations from Zipf's law are to a large extent driven by an undue concentration in the largest cities. They benefit from agglomeration effects which seem to work through scale rather than through density. Examining the cross-country heterogeneity in the city size distribution, our model selection approach suggests that historical factors play an important role, in line with the time of development hypothesis.

中文翻译：

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城市的人口、光线和规模分布

我们提供有关世界各国城市规模分布的新见解。使用地理空间数据和全球一致的城市识别方案，我们的数据集包含 194 个国家/地区的 13,844 个城市。城市规模是根据代表当地经济活动的人口和夜间灯光来衡量的。我们发现 Zipf 定律适用于许多（但不是全部）人口数量的国家，而城市规模在光照方面的分布更加不平等。这些与齐夫定律的偏差在很大程度上是由于大城市过度集中所致。它们受益于似乎通过规模而不是通过密度起作用的集聚效应。检查城市规模分布的跨国异质性，我们的模型选择方法表明历史因素起着重要作用，