Condensation in an Economic Model with Brand Competition

We present a linear agent based model on brand competition. Each agent belongs to one of the two brands and interacts with its nearest neighbors. In the process the agent can decide to change to the other brand if the move is beneficial. The numerical simulations show that the systems always condenses into a state when all agents belong to a single brand. We study the condensation times for different parameters of the model and the influence of different mechanisms to avoid condensation, like anti monopoly rules and brand fidelity.Comment: Accepted in: International Journal of Modern Physics

The distribution of wealth in the presence of altruism for simple economic models

We study the effect of altruism in two simple asset exchange models: the yard sale model (winner gets a random fraction of the poorer player's wealth) and the theft and fraud model (winner gets a random fraction of the loser's wealth). We also introduce in these models the concept of bargaining efficiency, which makes the poorer trader more aggressive in getting a favorable deal thus augmenting his winning probabilities. The altruistic behavior is controlled by varying the number of traders that behave altruistically and by the degree of altruism that they show. The resulting wealth distribution is characterized using the Gini index. We compare the resulting values of the Gini index at different levels of altruism in both models. It is found that altruistic behavior does lead to a more equitable wealth distribution but only for unreasonable high values of altruism that are difficult to expect in a real economic system.

Quantum and Thermal Corrections to a Classically Chaotic Dissipative System

The effects of quantum and thermal corrections on the dynamics of a damped nonlinearly kicked harmonic oscillator are studied. This is done via the Quantum Langevin Equation formalism working on a truncated moment expansion of the density matrix of the system. We find that the type of bifurcations present in the system change upon quantization and that chaotic behavior appears for values of the nonlinear parameter that are far below the chaotic threshold for the classical model. Upon increase of temperature or Planck's constant, bifurcation points and chaotic thresholds are shifted towards lower values of the nonlinear parameter. There is also an anomalous reverse behavior for low values of the cutoff frequency