Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
We provide empirical evidence of the dynamics of city size distribution for the whole of the twentieth century in U.S. cities and metropolitan areas. We focus our analysis on the new cities that were created during this period. The main contribution of the paper is the parametric and nonparametric analysis of the population growth experienced by these new-born cities. Our results enable us to confirm that when cities appear they grow very rapidly and, as the decades pass, their growth slows or even falls into decline. Moreover, the nonparametric analysis shows that most of the growth differential is driven by the cities' first decade of existence. This evidence is consistent with the theoretical framework regarding mean reversion (convergence) in the steady state and with the theories of sequential city growth.