Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
This paper examines the applicability of Zipf's law to tourism. It is established that a variation of this law holds in this case--a rank-size rule with concavity. Due to this non-linearity, it is shown that a spline regression provides an extremely convenient tool for predicting tourist arrivals in a country. The concavity is explained by appealing to random growth theory (lognormal distribution; Gibrat's law) and locational fundamentals. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.