The City-Country Rule: An Extension of the Rank-Size Rule

Abstract

This study introduces a “city-country rule” to complement the well-known rank-size rule for cities, from which it is derived. The city-country rule enables us to make a rough estimate of the population of the largest cities when the population of the entire country is known. It quickly tells us whether the actual city populations are large or small, compared to the world average for similarly ranked cities in countries of comparable size.

Science walks on two legs, but social sciences try to hop on one

“…I have also built and tested models of how a country’s population affects its trade/GDP ratio (Taagepera, 1976) and the size of its cities (Taagepera and Kaskla, 2001). I have studied how communism interacts with culture and corruption (Sandholtz and Taagepera, 2005).…”