City Size Distribution in Colombia and Its Regions, 1835–2005

By using census data from 1835 to 2005, this chapter studies the urban hierarchy in Colombia and its regions. The chapter focuses on three issues: firstly, the city size distribution by means of Zipf’s law and Gibrat’s law; secondly, evolution in the population growth models; and, thirdly, the empirical validation of the point made by Gabaix (Q J Econ 114(3):739–767, 1999b) on the coincidence between national and regional population patterns. Using the adjusted rank–size relationship and non-parametric techniques, we find that city size distributions follow Zipf’s power law, and also that Gibrat’s law holds at the national level and partially for the regions over the second half of the twentieth century. These results are consistent with changes in the population growth model from the mid-fifties at national and regional levels.