This Chapter is written for the Festschrift celebrating the 70th birthday of
the distinguished economist Duncan Foley from the New School for Social
Research in New York. This Chapter reviews applications of statistical physics
methods, such as the principle of entropy maximization, to the probability
distributions of money, income, and global energy consumption per capita. The
exponential probability distribution of wages, predicted by the statistical
equilibrium theory of a labor market developed by Foley in 1996, is supported
by empirical data on income distribution in the USA for the majority (about
97%) of population. In addition, the upper tail of income distribution (about
3% of population) follows a power law and expands dramatically during financial
bubbles, which results in a significant increase of the overall income
inequality. A mathematical analysis of the empirical data clearly demonstrates
the two-class structure of a society, as pointed out Karl Marx and recently
highlighted by the Occupy Movement. Empirical data for the energy consumption
per capita around the world are close to an exponential distribution, which can
be also explained by the entropy maximization principle.
We propose and document the evidence for an analogy between the dynamics of
granular counter-flows in the presence of bottlenecks or restrictions and
financial price formation processes. Using extensive simulations, we find that
the counter-flows of simulated pedestrians through a door display many stylized
facts observed in financial markets when the density around the door is
compared with the logarithm of the price. The stylized properties are present
already when the agents in the pedestrian model are assumed to display a
zero-intelligent behavior. If agents are given decision-making capacity and
adapt to partially follow the majority, periods of herding behavior may
additionally occur. This generates the very slow decay of the autocorrelation
of absolute return due to an intermittent dynamics. Our finding suggest that
the stylized facts in the fluctuations of the financial prices result from a
competition of two groups with opposite interests in the presence of a
constraint funneling the flow of transactions to a narrow band of prices.
A system of interdependent networks was recently found to be very vulnerable
since cascading failures that may lead to abrupt breakdown of the system. We
develop an analytical method, based on the percolation method developed for
single networks [M.E.J. Newman, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 103}, 058701 (2009)], to
study the effect of clustering within the networks on the robustness of the
interdependent networks. We find that, in contrast to single networks where the
percolation threshold, $p_c$, does not change with clustering for site
percolation and {\it decreases} with clustering for bond percolation, $p_c$ for
interdependent networks {\it increases} when networks are more clustered.
We present a generalized method for calculating the k-shell structure of
weighted networks. The method takes into ac
80b
count both the weight and the degree
of a network, in such a way that in the absence of weights we resume the shell
structure obtained by the classic k-shell decomposition. In the presence of
weights we show that the method is able to partition the network in a more
refined way, without the need of any arbitrary threshold on the weight values.
Furthermore, by simulating spreading processes using the
Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered model in four different real weighted
networks, we show that the weighted k-shell decomposition method ranks the
nodes more accurately, by placing nodes with higher spreading potential into
shells closer to the core. In addition we demonstrate our new method on a real
economic network and show that the core calculated using the weighted k-shell
method is more meaningful from an economics perspective when compared to the
unweighted method.
Here, a scenario is proposed, according to which a generic self-organized
critical (SOC) system can be looked upon as a Witten-type topological field
theory (W-TFT) with spontaneously broken Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST)
symmetry. One of the conditions for the SOC is the slow driving noise, which
unambiguously suggests Stratonovich interpretation of the corresponding
stochastic differential equation (SDE). This, in turn, necessitates the use of
Parisi-Sourlas-Wu stochastic quantization procedure, which straightforwardly
leads to a model with BRST-exact action, i.e., to a W-TFT. In the parameter
space of the SDE, there must exist full-dimensional regions where the
BRST-symmetry is spontaneously broken by instantons, which in the context of
SOC are essentially avalanches. In these regions, the avalanche-type SOC
dynamics is liberated from overwise a rightful dynamics-less W-TFT, and a
Goldstone mode of Fadeev-Popov ghosts exists. Goldstinos represent modulii of
instantons (avalanches) and being gapless are responsible for the critical
avalanche distribution in the low-energy, long-wavelength limit. The above
arguments are robust against moderate variations of the SDE's parameters and
the criticality is "self-tuned". The proposition of this paper suggests that
the machinery of W-TFTs may find its applications in many different areas of
modern science studying various physical realizations of SOC. It also suggests
that there may in principle exist a connection between some of SOC's and the
concept of topological quantum computing.
In this paper the complex-valued bes
528
t linear unbiased estimator of an unknown
constant mean of white noise was derived the ordinary least-squares estimator
of an unknown constant mean of random field (arithmetic mean) charged by an
imaginary error.
Understanding how spatial configurations of economic activity emerge is
important when formulating spatial planning and economic policy. A simple model
was proposed by Simon, who assumed that firms grow at a rate proportional to
their size, and that new divisions of firms with certain probabilities relocate
to other firms or to new centres of economic activity. Simon's model produces
realistic results in the sense that the sizes of economic centres follow a Zipf
distribution, which is also observed in reality. It lacks realism in the sense
that mechanisms such as cluster formation, congestion (defined as an overly
high density of the same activities) and dependence on the spatial distribution
of external parties (clients, labour markets) are ignored.
<br />The present paper proposed an extension of the Simon model that includes both
centripetal and centrifugal forces. Centripetal forces are included in the
sense that firm divisions are more likely to settle in locations that offer a
higher accessibility to other firms. Centrifugal forces are represented by an
aversion of a too high density of activities in the potential location. The
model is implemented as an agent-based simulation model in a simplified spatial
setting. By running both the Simon model and the extended model, comparisons
are made with respect to their effects on spatial configurations. To this end a
series of metrics are used, including the rank-size distribution and indices of
the degree of clustering and concentration.
We investigate the structure of the profit landscape obtained from the most
basic, fluctuation based, trading strategy applied for the daily stock price
data. The strategy is parameterized
9c5
by only two variables, p and q. Stocks are
sold and bought if the log return is bigger than p and less than -q,
respectively. Repetition of this simple strategy for a long time gives the
profit defined in the underlying two-dimensional parameter space of p and q. It
is revealed that the local maxima in the profit landscape are spread in the
form of a fractal structure. The fractal structure implies that successful
strategies are not localized to any region of the profit landscape and are
neither spaced evenly throughout the profit landscape, which makes the
optimization notoriously hard and hypersensitive for partial or limited
information. The concrete implication of this property is demonstrated by
showing that optimization of one stock for future values or other stocks
renders worse profit than a strategy that ignores fluctuations, i.e., a
long-term buy-and-hold strategy.
We introduce a new threshold model of social networks, in which the nodes
influenced by their neighbours can adopt one out of several alternatives. We
characterize social networks for which adoption of a product by the whole
network is possible (respectively necessary) and the ones for which a unique
outcome is guaranteed. These characterizations directly yield polynomial time
algorithms that allow us to determine whether a given social network satisfies
one of the above properties.
<br />We also study algorithmic questions for networks without unique outcomes. We
show that the problem of determining whether a final network exists in which
all nodes adopted some product is NP-complete. In turn, the problems of
determining whether a given node adopts some (respectively, a given) product in
some (respectively, all) network(s) are either co-NP complete or can be solved
in polynomial time.
<br />Further, we show that the problem of computing the minimum possible spread of
a product is NP-hard to approximate with an approximation ratio better than
$\Omega(n)$, in contrast to the maximum spread, which is efficiently
computable. Finally, we clarify that some of the above problems can be solved
in polynomial time when there are only two products.
Predicting X from Twitter is a popular fad within the Twitter research
subculture. It seems both appealing and relatively easy. Among such kind of
studies, electoral prediction is maybe the most attractive, and at this moment
there is a growing body of literature on such a topic. This is not only an
interesting research problem but, above all, it is extremely difficult.
However, most of the authors seem to be more interested in claiming positive
results than in providing sound and reproducible methods. It is also especially
worrisome that many recent papers seem to only acknowledge those studies
supporting the idea of Twitter predicting elections, instead of conducting a
balanced literature review showing both sides of the matter. After reading many
of such papers I have decided to write such a survey myself. Hence, in this
paper, every study relevant to the matter of electoral prediction using social
media is commented. From this review it can be concluded that the predictive
power of Twitter regarding elections has been greatly exaggerated, and that
hard research problems still lie ahead.
The total number of patents produced by a country (or the number of patents
produced per capita) is often used as an indicator for innovation. Here we
present evidence tha
7b4
t the distribution of patents amongst applicants within
many OECD countries is well-described by power laws with exponents that vary
between 1.66 (Japan) and 2.37 (Poland). Using simulations based on simple
preferential attachment-type rules that generate power laws, we find we can
explain some of the variation in exponents between countries, with countries
that have larger numbers of patents per applicant generally exhibiting smaller
exponents in both the simulated and actual data. Similarly we find that the
exponents for most countries are inversely correlated with other indicators of
innovation, such as R&D intensity or the ubiquity of export baskets. This
suggests that in more advanced economies, which tend to have smaller values of
the exponent, a greater proportion of the total number of patents are filed by
large companies than in less advanced countries.
We propose a model to analyze citation growth and influences of fitness
(competitiveness) factors in an evolving citation network. Applying the
proposed method to modeling citations to papers and scholars in the InfoVis
2004 data, a benchmark collection about a 31-year history of informatio
7bf
n
visualization, leads to findings consistent with citation distributions in
general and observations of the domain in particular. Fitness variables based
on prior impacts and the time factor have significant influences on citation
outcomes. We find considerably large effect sizes from the fitness modeling,
which suggest inevitable bias in citation analysis due to these factors. While
raw citation scores offer little insight into the growth of InfoVis,
normalization of the scores by influences of time and prior fitness offers a
reasonable depiction of the field's development. The analysis demonstrates the
proposed model's ability to produce results consistent with observed data and
to support meaningful comparison of citation scores over time.
FuturICT foundations are social science, complex systems science, and ICT.
The main concerns and challenges in the science of complex systems in the
context of FuturICT are laid out in this paper with special emphasis on the
Complex Systems route to Social Sciences. This include complex systems having:
many heterogeneous interacting parts; multiple scales; complicated transition
laws; unexpected or unpredicted emergence; sensitive dependence on initial
conditions; path-dependent dynamics; networked hierarchical connectivities;
interaction of autonomous agents; self-organisation; non-equilibrium dynamics;
combinatorial explosion; adaptivity to changing environments; co-evolving
subsystems; ill-defined boundaries; and multilevel dynamics. In this context,
science is seen as the process of abstracting the dynamics of systems from
data. This presents many challenges including: data gathering by large-scale
experiment, participatory sensing and social computation, managing huge
distributed dynamic and heterogeneous databases; moving from data to dynamical
models, going beyond correlations to cause-effect relationships, understanding
the relationship between simple and comprehensive models with appropriate
choices of variables, ensemble modeling and data assimilation, modeling systems
of systems of systems with many levels between micro and macro; and formulating
new approaches to prediction, forecasting, and risk, especially in systems that
can reflect on and change their behaviour in response to predictions, and
systems whose apparently predictable behaviour is disrupted by apparently
unpredictable rare or extreme events. These challenges are part of the FuturICT
agenda.
The aim of the paper is to derive for the neg
599
ative correlation function with
a time parameter an asymptotic disjunction of the numerical generalized
least-squares estimator of an unknown constant mean of random field in fact the
correct classic generalized least-squares estimator of an unknown constant mean
of the field.
We derive explicit recursive formulas for Target Close (TC) and
Implementation Shortfall (IS) in the Almgren-Chriss framework. We explain how
to compute the optimal starting and stopping times for IS and TC, respectively,
given a minimum trading size. We also show how to add a minimum participation
rate constraint (Percentage of Volume, PVol) for both TC and IS. We also study
an alternative set of risk measures for the optimisation of algorithmic trading
curves. We assume a self-similar process (e.g. L\'evy process, fractional
Brownian motion or fractal process) and define a new risk measure, the
$p$-variation, which reduces to the variance if the process is a Brownian
motion. We deduce the explicit formula for the TC and IS algorithms under a
self-similar process. We show that there is an equivalence between self-similar
models and a family of risk measures called $p$-variations: assuming a
self-similar process and calibrating empirically the parameter $p$ for the
$p$-variation yields the same result as assuming a Brownian motion and using
the $p$-variation as risk measure instead of the variance. We also show that
$p$ can be seen as a measure of the aggressiveness: $p$ increases if and only
if the TC algorithm starts later and executes faster. From the explicit
expression of the TC algorithm one can compute the sensitivities of the curve
with respect to the parameters up to any order. As an example, we compute the
first order sensitivity with respect to both a local and a global surge of
volatility. Finally, we show how the parameter $p$ of the $p$-variation can be
implied from the optimal starting time of TC, and that under this framework $p$
can be viewed as a measure of the joint impact of market impact (i.e.
liquidity) and volatility.
ac7
We propose a framework to study optimal trading policies in a one-tick
pro-rata limit order book, as typically arises in short-term interest rate
futures contracts. The high-frequency trader has the choice to trade via market
orders or limit orders, which are represented respectively by impulse controls
and regular controls. We model and discuss the consequences of the two main
features of this particular microstructure: first, the limit orders sent by the
high frequency trader are only partially executed, and therefore she has no
control on the executed quantity. For this purpose, cumulative executed volumes
are modelled by compound Poisson processes. Second, the high frequency trader
faces the overtrading risk, which is the risk of brutal variations in her
inventory. The consequences of this risk are investigated in the context of
optimal liquidation. The optimal trading problem is studied by stochastic
control and dynamic programming methods, which lead to a characterization of
the value function in terms of an integro quasi-variational inequality. We then
provide the associated numerical resolution procedure, and convergence of this
computational scheme is proved. Next, we examine several situations where we
can on one hand simplify the numerical procedure by reducing the number of
state variables, and on the other hand focus on specific cases of practical
interest. We examine both a market making problem and a best execution problem
in the case where the mid-price process is a martingale. We also detail a high
frequency trading strategy in the case where a (predictive) directional
information on the mid-price is available. Each of the resulting strategies are
illustrated by numerical tests.
In this paper we study the continuum time dynamics of a stock in a market
where agents behavior is modeled by a Minority Game with number of strategies
for each agent S=2 and "fake" market histories. The dynamics derived is a
generalized geometric Brownian motion; from the Black&Scholes formula the
calibration of the Mi
660
nority Game, by means of the game parameter $ \sigma^{2}$,
on the European options on DAX Index market is performed. An "$
(\alpha,\sigma^{2})$ -matrix" containing, given options' moneyness and
maturities, values of the parameters $\alpha$ and $ \sigma^{2}$ that make the
theoretical option price agree with the market price is constructed. We
conclude that the asymmetric phase of the Minority Game with $\alpha$ close to
$\alpha_c$ is coherent with options implied volatility market.
For a market impact model, price manipulation and related notions play a role
that is similar to the role of arbitrage in a derivatives pricing model. Here,
we give a systematic
6eb
investigation into such regularity issues when orders can
be executed both at a traditional exchange and in a dark pool. To this end, we
focus on a class of dark-pool models whose market impact at the exchange is
described by an Almgren--Chriss model. Conditions for the absence of price
manipulation for all Almgren--Chriss models include the absence of temporary
cross-venue impact, the presence of full permanent cross-venue impact, and the
additional penalization of orders executed in the dark pool. When a particular
Almgren--Chriss model has been fixed, we show by a number of examples that the
regularity of the dark-pool model hinges in a subtle way on the interplay of
all model parameters and on the liquidation time constraint.
How far and how fast does information spre
95e
ad in social media? Researchers
have recently examined a number of factors that affect information diffusion in
online social networks, including: the novelty of information, users' activity
levels, who they pay attention to, and how they respond to friends'
recommendations. Using URLs as markers of information, we carry out a detailed
study of retweeting, the primary mechanism by which information spreads on the
Twitter follower graph. Our empirical study examines how users respond to an
incoming stimulus, i.e., a tweet (message) from a friend, and reveals that
%retweeting behavior is constrained by a few simple principles. the "principle
of least effort" combined with limited attention plays a dominant role in
retweeting behavior. Specifically, we observe that users retweet information
when it is most visible, such as when it near the top of their Twitter stream.
Moreover, our measurements quantify how a user's limited attention is divided
among incoming tweets, providing novel evidence that highly connected
individuals are less likely to propagate an arbitrary tweet. Our study
indicates that the finite ability to process incoming information constrains
social contagion, and we conclude that rapid decay of visibility is the primary
barrier to information propagation online.
We
7e4
extend the formalism of Random Boolean Networks with canalizing rules to
multilevel complex networks. The formalism allows to model genetic networks in
which each gene might take part in more than one signaling pathway. We use a
semi-annealed approach to study the stability of this class of models when
coupled in a multiplex network and show that the analytical results are in good
agreement with numerical simulations. Our main finding is that the multiplex
structure provides a mechanism for the stabilization of the system and of
chaotic regimes of individual layers. Our results help understanding why some
genetic networks that are theoretically expected to operate in the chaotic
regime can actually display dynamical stability.