Emergent behavior in multiplicative critical processes and applications to economy
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The main objective of this thesis is to develop a theoretical foundation for the study of economic phenomena based on methods of statistical physics applied to a system composed by set of multiplicative processes. An equivalent of equilibrium is established for such system and proved to behave statistically as in thermal equilibrium. An equivalent to canonical and microcanonical ensembles is realized and the relation with the theory of scale-free complex networks is made. The statistics of more than one century of US economy is studied in the light of these findings and an explanation for inflation and the resilience of wealth inequalities is found. The equivalent of Markov stochastic process on the set of multiplicative processes is established and the corresponding Fokker-Plank equation is derived. Moreover, a relation with self-organized criticality (SOC) is made. The study of market fluctuations is done using SOC models and yielding the same result as the Fokker-Planck approach. Based on these findings, we will argue that the distribution on the fluctuations of prices in organized market cannot follow Levy-stable distributions as stated by Mandelbrot.89 Finally, some applications to market and credit risk are made.
Author: João P. da Cruz
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2242824619