IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1204.6483.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Applications of statistical mechanics to economics: Entropic origin of the probability distributions of money, income, and energy consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Victor M. Yakovenko

Abstract

This Chapter is written for the Festschrift celebrating the 70th birthday of the distinguished economist Duncan Foley from the New School for Social Research in New York. This Chapter reviews applications of statistical physics methods, such as the principle of entropy maximization, to the probability distributions of money, income, and global energy consumption per capita. The exponential probability distribution of wages, predicted by the statistical equilibrium theory of a labor market developed by Foley in 1996, is supported by empirical data on income distribution in the USA for the majority (about 97%) of population. In addition, the upper tail of income distribution (about 3% of population) follows a power law and expands dramatically during financial bubbles, which results in a significant increase of the overall income inequality. A mathematical analysis of the empirical data clearly demonstrates the two-class structure of a society, as pointed out Karl Marx and recently highlighted by the Occupy Movement. Empirical data for the energy consumption per capita around the world are close to an exponential distribution, which can be also explained by the entropy maximization principle.

Suggested Citation

  • Victor M. Yakovenko, 2012. "Applications of statistical mechanics to economics: Entropic origin of the probability distributions of money, income, and energy consumption," Papers 1204.6483, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1204.6483
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.6483
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miguel Molico, 2006. "The Distribution Of Money And Prices In Search Equilibrium," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(3), pages 701-722, August.
    2. Foley Duncan K., 1994. "A Statistical Equilibrium Theory of Markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 321-345, April.
    3. Wright, Ian, 2009. "Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-27.
    4. Aoki,Masanao & Yoshikawa,Hiroshi, 2011. "Reconstructing Macroeconomics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107634206.
    5. Anand Banerjee & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2009. "Universal patterns of inequality," Papers 0912.4898, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2010.
    6. Adrian Dragulescu & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money," Papers cond-mat/0001432, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2000.
    7. Smith, Eric & Foley, Duncan K., 2008. "Classical thermodynamics and economic general equilibrium theory," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 7-65, January.
    8. Wright, Ian, 2005. "The social architecture of capitalism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 346(3), pages 589-620.
    9. Fujiwara, Yoshi & Souma, Wataru & Aoyama, Hideaki & Kaizoji, Taisei & Aoki, Masanao, 2003. "Growth and fluctuations of personal income," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 321(3), pages 598-604.
    10. Silver, Jonathan & Slud, Eric & Takamoto, Keiji, 2002. "Statistical Equilibrium Wealth Distributions in an Exchange Economy with Stochastic Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 417-435, October.
    11. Xi, Ning & Ding, Ning & Wang, Yougui, 2005. "How required reserve ratio affects distribution and velocity of money," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 357(3), pages 543-555.
    12. A. Chatterjee & B. K. Chakrabarti, 2007. "Kinetic exchange models for income and wealth distributions," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 60(2), pages 135-149, November.
    13. J. Doyne Farmer & Martin Shubik & Eric Smith, 2005. "Economics: the next physical science?," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1520, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    14. Armon Rezai & Duncan K. Foley & Lance Taylor, 2016. "Global Warming and Economic Externalities," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Graciela Chichilnisky & Armon Rezai (ed.), The Economics of the Global Environment, pages 447-470, Springer.
    15. Banerjee, Anand & Yakovenko, Victor M. & Di Matteo, T., 2006. "A study of the personal income distribution in Australia," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 370(1), pages 54-59.
    16. Chakrabarti, Anindya S. & Chakrabarti, Bikas K., 2009. "Microeconomics of the ideal gas like market models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(19), pages 4151-4158.
    17. Arnab Chatterjee & Bikas K. Chakrabarti, 2007. "Kinetic Exchange Models for Income and Wealth Distributions," Papers 0709.1543, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2007.
    18. Duncan K. Foley, 1996. "Statistical Equilibrium In A Simple Labor Market," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 125-147, June.
    19. Ning Xi & Ning Ding & Yougui Wang, 2005. "How Required Reserve Ratio Affects Distribution and Velocity of Money," Papers physics/0507160, arXiv.org.
    20. Anirban Chakraborti & Bikas K. Chakrabarti, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money: How saving propensity affects its distribution," Papers cond-mat/0004256, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2000.
    21. S. Ispolatov & P.L. Krapivsky & S. Redner, 1998. "Wealth distributions in asset exchange models," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 2(2), pages 267-276, March.
    22. A. Chakraborti & B.K. Chakrabarti, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money: how saving propensity affects its distribution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 17(1), pages 167-170, September.
    23. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1993. "A Search-Theoretic Approach to Monetary Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 63-77, March.
    24. Victor M. Yakovenko & J. Barkley Rosser, 2009. "Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income," Papers 0905.1518, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2009.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arthur Brackmann Netto, 2018. "From Classes to Individuals: Standardizing a Link Between Personal and Functional Distribution," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2018_15, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    2. Laura Carvalho & Armon Rezai, 2016. "Personal income inequality and aggregate demand," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 40(2), pages 491-505.
    3. Kitov, Ivan & Kitov, Oleg, 2013. "The dynamics of personal income distribution and inequality in the United States," MPRA Paper 48649, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Victor M. Yakovenko & J. Barkley Rosser, 2009. "Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income," Papers 0905.1518, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2009.
    2. Costas Efthimiou & Adam Wearne, 2016. "Household Income Distribution in the USA," Papers 1602.06234, arXiv.org.
    3. Ellis Scharfenaker, 2022. "Statistical Equilibrium Methods In Analytical Political Economy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 276-309, April.
    4. Aydiner, Ekrem & Cherstvy, Andrey G. & Metzler, Ralf, 2018. "Wealth distribution, Pareto law, and stretched exponential decay of money: Computer simulations analysis of agent-based models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 490(C), pages 278-288.
    5. Chakrabarti, Anindya S. & Chakrabarti, Bikas K., 2010. "Statistical theories of income and wealth distribution," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 4, pages 1-31.
    6. Chakrabarti, Anindya S. & Chakrabarti, Bikas K., 2010. "Inequality reversal: Effects of the savings propensity and correlated returns," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(17), pages 3572-3579.
    7. Anirban Chakraborti & Ioane Muni Toke & Marco Patriarca & Frédéric Abergel, 2011. "Econophysics review: II. Agent-based models," Post-Print hal-00621059, HAL.
    8. Diniz, M. & Mendes, F.M., 2012. "Effects of taxation on money distribution," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 81-85.
    9. Boghosian, Bruce M. & Devitt-Lee, Adrian & Johnson, Merek & Li, Jie & Marcq, Jeremy A. & Wang, Hongyan, 2017. "Oligarchy as a phase transition: The effect of wealth-attained advantage in a Fokker–Planck description of asset exchange," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 476(C), pages 15-37.
    10. Sokolov, Andrey & Melatos, Andrew & Kieu, Tien, 2010. "Laplace transform analysis of a multiplicative asset transfer model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(14), pages 2782-2792.
    11. Cui, Jian & Pan, Qiuhui & Qian, Qian & He, Mingfeng & Sun, Qilin, 2013. "A multi-agent dynamic model based on different kinds of bequests," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(6), pages 1393-1397.
    12. Takeshi Kato, 2022. "Wealth Redistribution and Mutual Aid: Comparison using Equivalent/Nonequivalent Exchange Models of Econophysics," Papers 2301.00091, arXiv.org.
    13. Ghosh, Asim & Chatterjee, Arnab & Inoue, Jun-ichi & Chakrabarti, Bikas K., 2016. "Inequality measures in kinetic exchange models of wealth distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 451(C), pages 465-474.
    14. Yong Tao & Xiangjun Wu & Tao Zhou & Weibo Yan & Yanyuxiang Huang & Han Yu & Benedict Mondal & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2019. "Exponential structure of income inequality: evidence from 67 countries," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(2), pages 345-376, June.
    15. Düring, Bertram & Matthes, Daniel & Toscani, Giuseppe, 2008. "A Boltzmann-type approach to the formation of wealth distribution curves," CoFE Discussion Papers 08/05, University of Konstanz, Center of Finance and Econometrics (CoFE).
    16. Bertotti, Maria Letizia & Modanese, Giovanni, 2011. "From microscopic taxation and redistribution models to macroscopic income distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(21), pages 3782-3793.
    17. Jan Lorenz & Fabian Paetzel & Frank Schweitzer, 2013. "Redistribution Spurs Growth by Using a Portfolio Effect on Risky Human Capital," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(2), pages 1-13, February.
    18. Newby, Michael & Behr, Adam & Feizabadi, Mitra Shojania, 2011. "Investigating the distribution of personal income obtained from the recent U.S. data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 1170-1173, May.
    19. Soriano-Hernández, P. & del Castillo-Mussot, M. & Campirán-Chávez, I. & Montemayor-Aldrete, J.A., 2017. "Wealth of the world’s richest publicly traded companies per industry and per employee: Gamma, Log-normal and Pareto power-law as universal distributions?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 471(C), pages 733-749.
    20. Lux, Thomas, 2008. "Applications of statistical physics in finance and economics," Kiel Working Papers 1425, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1204.6483. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.