What does Tell a Deviation from Zipf's law?

Abstract

The paper discusses connection between Zipf's law and regulatory mechanisms of development of city system; influence of observed units and sample size on the deviation of the distribution from the predictions is estimated. The study relays on comparisons of Zipf's coefficients and of the distributions for different periods and various approaches to the city definition. The conclusions are that the deviation from the rule rank-size depends on sample size and on observed units; and it is incorrectly to treat this fact as an imperfection of the city system and as a decrease of economic efficiency.