On the parametric description of the French, German, Italian and Spanish city size distributions

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We study the parametric description of the city size distribution of four European countries: France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The parametric models used are the lognormal, the double Pareto lognormal, the normal-Box–Cox and the threshold double Pareto Singh–Maddala (last two of these are defined in this paper). The results are quite regular. The preferred model is always the threshold double Pareto Singh–Maddala in the four countries. However, the dPln is not rejected always for the case of France, and in the case of Italy, the dPln is the runner-up distribution.