Statistical mechanics of money |
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| Authors: | A Dragulescu VM Yakovenko |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-4111, USA, US |
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| Abstract: | In a closed economic system, money is conserved. Thus, by analogy with energy, the equilibrium probability distribution of
money must follow the exponential Boltzmann-Gibbs law characterized by an effective temperature equal to the average amount
of money per economic agent. We demonstrate how the Boltzmann-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 Boltzmann-Gibbs law does not
hold. The instantaneous distribution of money among the agents of a system should not be confused with the distribution of
wealth. The latter also includes material wealth, which is not conserved, and thus may have a different (e.g. power-law) distribution.
Received 22 June 2000 |
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| Keywords: | PACS 87 23 Ge Dynamics of social systems - 05 90 +m Other topics in statistical physics thermodynamics and nonlinear dynamical systems - 89 90 +n Other topics of general interest to physicists - 02 50 -r Probability theory stochastic processes and statistics |
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