May 10, 2002
We study the distributions of money in a simple closed economic system for different types of monetary transactions. We know that for arbitrary and random sharing but locally conserving money transactions, the money distribution goes to the Gibb's distribution of statistical mechanics. We then consider the effects of savings, etc. and see how the distribution changes. We also propose a new model where the agents invest equal amounts of money in each transaction. We find that for short time-periods, the money distribution obeys a power-law with an exponent very close to unity, and has an exponential tail; after a very long time, this distribution collapses and the entire amount of money goes to a tiny fraction of the population.
Similar papers 1
December 5, 2003
We review a simple model of closed economy, where the economic agents make money transactions and a saving criterion is present. We observe the Gibbs distribution for zero saving propensity, and non-Gibbs distributions otherwise. While the exact solution in the case of zero saving propensity is already known to be given by the Gibbs distribution, here we provide the explicit analytical form of the equilibrium distribution for the general case of nonzero saving propensity. We ...
April 17, 2000
We consider a simple model of a closed economic system where the total money is conserved and the number of economic agents is fixed. In analogy to statistical systems in equilibrium, money and the average money per economic agent are equivalent to energy and temperature, respectively. We investigate the effect of the saving propensity of the agents on the stationary or equilibrium money distribution.The equilibrium probablity distribution of money becomes the usual Gibb's di...
January 30, 2000
In a closed economic system, money is conserved. Thus, by analogy with energy, the equilibrium probability distribution of money must follow the exponential Gibbs law characterized by an effective temperature equal to the average amount of money per economic agent. We demonstrate how the Gibbs distribution emerges in computer simulations of economic models. Then we consider a thermal machine, in which the difference of temperatures allows one to extract a monetary profit. We ...
July 28, 2010
This Chapter reviews statistical models for the probability distribution of money developed in the econophysics literature since the late 1990s. In these models, economic transactions are modeled as random transfers of money between the agents in payment for goods and services. Starting from the initially equal distribution of money, the system spontaneously develops a highly unequal distribution of money analogous to the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution of energy in physics. Bou...
May 6, 2005
We analyze an ideal gas like models of a trading market. We propose a new fit for the money distribution in the fixed or uniform saving market. For the marketwith quenched random saving factors for its agents we show that the steady state income ($m$) distribution $P(m)$ in the model has a power law tail with Pareto index $\nu$ exactly equal to unity, confirming the earlier numerical studies on this model. We analyze the distribution of mutual money difference and also develo...
April 28, 2010
We review some aspects, especially those we can tackle analytically, of a minimal model of closed economy analogous to the kinetic theory model of ideal gases where the agents exchange wealth amongst themselves such that the total wealth is conserved, and each individual agent saves a fraction (0 < lambda < 1) of wealth before transaction. We are interested in the special case where the fraction lambda is constant for all the agents (global saving propensity) in the closed sy...
July 18, 2005
We discuss the ideal gas like models of a trading market. The effect of savings on the distribution have been thoroughly reviewed. The market with fixed saving factors leads to a Gamma-like distribution. In a market with quenched random saving factors for its agents we show that the steady state income ($m$) distribution $P(m)$ in the model has a power law tail with Pareto index $\nu$ equal to unity. We also discuss the detailed numerical results on this model. We analyze the...
May 11, 2009
This Colloquium reviews statistical models for money, wealth, and income distributions developed in the econophysics literature since the late 1990s. By analogy with the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution of energy in physics, it is shown that the probability distribution of money is exponential for certain classes of models with interacting economic agents. Alternative scenarios are also reviewed. Data analysis of the empirical distributions of wealth and income reveals a two-clas...
January 4, 2017
Models in econophysics, i.e., the emerging field of statistical physics that applies the main concepts of traditional physics to economics, typically consist of large systems of economic agents who are characterized by the amount of money they have. In the simplest model, at each time step, one agent gives one dollar to another agent, with both agents being chosen independently and uniformly at random from the system. Numerical simulations of this model suggest that, at least...
January 1, 2018
This paper is concerned with general spatially explicit versions of three stochastic models for the dynamics of money that have been introduced and studied numerically by statistical physicists: the uniform reshuffling model, the immediate exchange model and the model with saving propensity. All three models consist of systems of economical agents that consecutively engage in pairwise monetary transactions. Computer simulations performed in the physics literature suggest that...