King effect

In statistics, economics, and econophysics, the king effect is the phenomenon in which the top one or two members of a ranked set show up as clear outliers. These top one or two members are unexpectedly large because they do not conform to the statistical distribution or rank-distribution which the remainder of the set obeys.
Distributions typically followed include the power-law distribution, that is a basis for the stretched exponential function, and parabolic fractal distribution.
The King effect has been observed in the distribution of:

French city sizes, and similarly for other countries with a primate city, such as the United Kingdom, and the extreme case of Bangkok.
Country populations.

Note, however, that the king effect is not limited to outliers with a positive evaluation attached to their rank: for rankings on an undesirable attribute, there may exist a pauper effect, with a similar detachment of extremely ranked data points from the reasonably distributed portion of the data set.