“…The relevance of the rank-size theory for applications mirrors in the popularity of such a framework in different fields, ranging from metrics of science and bibliometrics (see, e.g., Ausloos, 2013Ausloos, , 2015Chatterjee et al, 2016;Mansilla et al, 2007) to seismology (see, e.g., Ficcadenti and Cerqueti, 2017), text analysis and linguistics (see, e.g., Ficcadenti et al, 2019Ficcadenti et al, , 2020Montemurro, 2001) and, of course, economics (see, e.g., Brakman et al, 1999;Cerqueti and Ausloos, 2015;Córdoba, 2008;Dimitrova and Ausloos, 2015;Giesen and Südekum, 2011).…”