IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/cond-mat-0406694.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evidence for the Independence of Waged and Unwaged Income, Evidence for Boltzmann Distributions in Waged Income, and the Outlines of a Coherent Theory of Income Distribution

Author

Listed:
  • G. Willis
  • J. Mimkes

Abstract

Two sets of high quality income data are analysed in detail, one set from the UK, one from the USA. It is firstly demonstrated that both a log-normal distribution and a Boltzmann distribution can give very accurate fits to both these data sets. The absence of a power tail in the US data set is then discussed. Taken in conjunction with detailed evidence from the UK and Japanese income data, a strong case is made for the mathematically separate treatment of waged and unwaged income. The authors present a case for preferring the use of the Boltzmann distribution over the log-normal function, this leads to a brief review of the work of a number of researchers, which shows that a coherent theory for the distribution of all income can be postulated.

Suggested Citation

  • G. Willis & J. Mimkes, 2004. "Evidence for the Independence of Waged and Unwaged Income, Evidence for Boltzmann Distributions in Waged Income, and the Outlines of a Coherent Theory of Income Distribution," Papers cond-mat/0406694, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:cond-mat/0406694
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0406694
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Marc Mezard, 2000. "Wealth condensation in a simple model of economy," Science & Finance (CFM) working paper archive 500026, Science & Finance, Capital Fund Management.
    2. Wataru Souma, 2000. "Universal Structure of the Personal Income Distribution," Papers cond-mat/0011373, arXiv.org.
    3. Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe & Mézard, Marc, 2000. "Wealth condensation in a simple model of economy," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 282(3), pages 536-545.
    4. Moshe Levy & Sorin Solomon, 1996. "Power Laws Are Logarithmic Boltzmann Laws," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(04), pages 595-601.
    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. Arnab Chatterjee & Bikas K Chakrabarti, 2005. "Ideal-Gas Like Markets: Effect of Savings," Papers physics/0507136, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2005.
    2. F. Clementi & M. Gallegati, 2005. "Pareto's Law of Income Distribution: Evidence for Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States," Papers physics/0504217, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2006.
    3. Geoff Willis, 2004. "Laser Welfare: First Steps in Econodynamic Engineering," Microeconomics 0408003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. N. J. Moura & M. B. Ribeiro, 2009. "Evidence for the Gompertz curve in the income distribution of Brazil 1978–2005," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 67(1), pages 101-120, January.
    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. F. Clementi & M. Gallegati & G. Kaniadakis, 2007. "κ-generalized statistics in personal income distribution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 57(2), pages 187-193, May.
    7. Bourguignon, Marcelo & Saulo, Helton & Fernandez, Rodrigo Nobre, 2016. "A new Pareto-type distribution with applications in reliability and income data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 457(C), pages 166-175.
    8. Venkat Venkatasubramanian, 2010. "What is Fair Pay for Executives? An Information Theoretic Analysis of Wage Distributions," Papers 1002.2269, arXiv.org.

    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. Willis, Geoff, 2011. "Why money trickles up – wealth & income distributions," MPRA Paper 30851, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Venkatasubramanian, Venkat & Luo, Yu & Sethuraman, Jay, 2015. "How much inequality in income is fair? A microeconomic game theoretic perspective," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 435(C), pages 120-138.
    3. E. Samanidou & E. Zschischang & D. Stauffer & T. Lux, 2001. "Microscopic Models of Financial Markets," Papers cond-mat/0110354, arXiv.org.
    4. G. Willis, 2004. "Laser Welfare: First Steps in Econodynamic Engineering," Papers cond-mat/0408227, arXiv.org.
    5. Nicolas Bouleau & Christophe Chorro, 2017. "The impact of randomness on the distribution of wealth: Some economic aspects of the Wright-Fisher diffusion process," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01138383, HAL.
    6. Wataru Souma, 2002. "Physics of Personal Income," Papers cond-mat/0202388, arXiv.org.
    7. Nicolas Bouleau & Christophe Chorro, 2015. "The impact of randomness on the distribution of wealth: Some economic aspects of the Wright-Fisher diffusion process," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 15024r, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, revised Jul 2015.
    8. Nicolas Bouleau & Christophe Chorro, 2017. "The impact of randomness on the distribution of wealth: Some economic aspects of the Wright-Fisher diffusion process," Post-Print hal-01138383, HAL.
    9. Anirban Chakraborti & Ioane Muni Toke & Marco Patriarca & Frédéric Abergel, 2011. "Econophysics review: II. Agent-based models," Post-Print hal-00621059, HAL.
    10. Bouleau, Nicolas & Chorro, Christophe, 2017. "The impact of randomness on the distribution of wealth: Some economic aspects of the Wright–Fisher diffusion process," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 479(C), pages 379-395.
    11. 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.
    12. E. Samanidou & E. Zschischang & D. Stauffer & T. Lux, 2007. "Agent-based Models of Financial Markets," Papers physics/0701140, arXiv.org.
    13. Willis, Geoff, 2011. "Wealth, income, earnings and the statistical mechanics of flow systems," MPRA Paper 31139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Nicolas Bouleau & Christophe Chorro, 2015. "The impact of randomness on the distribution of wealth: Some economic aspects of the Wright-Fisher diffusion process," Post-Print halshs-01162452, HAL.
    15. Venkat Venkatasubramanian, 2010. "What is Fair Pay for Executives? An Information Theoretic Analysis of Wage Distributions," Papers 1002.2269, arXiv.org.
    16. Stojkoski, Viktor & Karbevski, Marko & Utkovski, Zoran & Basnarkov, Lasko & Kocarev, Ljupco, 2021. "Evolution of cooperation in networked heterogeneous fluctuating environments," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 572(C).
    17. Kočišová, J. & Horváth, D. & Brutovský, B., 2009. "The efficiency of individual optimization in the conditions of competitive growth," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(17), pages 3585-3592.
    18. Bertram During & Nicos Georgiou & Enrico Scalas, 2016. "A stylized model for wealth distribution," Papers 1609.08978, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    19. Yougui Wang & Ning Ding, 2005. "Dynamic Process of Money Transfer Models," Papers physics/0507162, arXiv.org.
    20. Tamotsu Onozaki, 2018. "Nonlinearity, Bounded Rationality, and Heterogeneity," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-4-431-54971-0, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design

    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:cond-mat/0406694. 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.