The nexus of income and size distribution of Chinese cities, 1984–2003

Abstract

We estimate the distribution dynamics of city income and size in China during 1984–2003 using stochastic kernel. Our results show that intra-distribution mobility are significant in both income and size and provide evidences on China experienced internal brain drain.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Alex Wai-Yip Ho and T. R. Lakshmanan for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹ The demographic evolution studied here only pertains to the registered urban residents, who possess the citizenship of their residential city. Namely, it does not include immigrants who do not have Hukou in the city.