Monetary economics from econophysics perspective

This is an invited article for the Discussion and Debate special issue of The European Physical Journal Special Topics on the subject "Can Economics Be a Physical Science?" The first part of the paper traces the personal path of the author from theoretical physics to economics. It briefly summarizes applications of statistical physics to monetary transactions in an ensemble of economic agents. It shows how a highly unequal probability distribution of money emerges due to irreversible increase of entropy in the system. The second part examines deep conceptual and controversial issues and fallacies in monetary economics from econophysics perspective. These issues include the nature of money, conservation (or not) of money, distinctions between money vs. wealth and money vs. debt, creation of money by the state and debt by the banks, the origins of monetary crises and capitalist profit. Presentation uses plain language understandable to laypeople and may be of interest to both specialists and general public.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur

Econophysics, Statistical Mechanics Approach to

This is a review article for Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science, to be published by Springer http://refworks.springer.com/complexity/. The paper reviews statistical models for money, wealth, and income distributions developed in the econophysics literature since late 1990s.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, 151 citations. V.2: one reference added. V.3: many minor corrections, some references added. V.4: many minor stylistic corrections incorporated after receiving the proof

Universal patterns of inequality

Probability distributions of money, income, and energy consumption per capita are studied for ensembles of economic agents. The principle of entropy maximization for partitioning of a limited resource gives exponential distributions for the investigated variables. A non-equilibrium difference of money temperatures between different systems generates net fluxes of money and population. To describe income distribution, a stochastic process with additive and multiplicative components is introduced. The resultant distribution interpolates between exponential at the low end and power law at the high end, in agreement with the empirical data for USA. We show that the increase of income inequality in USA originates primarily from the increase of the income fraction going to the upper tail, which now exceeds 20% of the total income. Analyzing the data from the World Resources Institute, we find that the distribution of energy consumption per capita around the world can be approximately described by the exponential function. Comparing the data for 1990, 2000, and 2005, we discuss the effect of globalization on the inequality of energy consumption.Comment: Accepted to New Journal of Physics. 27 pages (IOP preprint style), 8 figures. V.2: Updated figs. 3 and 8, many references added, all text edited. V.3: Minor changes, last 3 references added. V.4: Minor stylistic changes and reference updates in proof

Statistical mechanics of money

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 also discuss the role of debt, and models with broken time-reversal symmetry for which the Gibbs law does not hold.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX. V.4: final version accepted to Eur. Phys. J. B: few stylistic revisions and additional reference