Diffusion, peer pressure and tailed distributions
Statistical Mechanics
2009-11-07 v2 Populations and Evolution
Abstract
We present a general, physically motivated non-linear and non-local advection equation in which the diffusion of interacting random walkers competes with a local drift arising from a kind of peer pressure. We show, using a mapping to an integrable dynamical system, that on varying a parameter, the steady state behaviour undergoes a transition from the standard diffusive behavior to a localized stationary state characterized by a tailed distribution. Finally, we show that recent empirical laws on economic growth can be explained as a collective phenomenon due to peer pressure interaction.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0202212,
title = {Diffusion, peer pressure and tailed distributions},
author = {Fabio Cecconi and Matteo Marsili and Jayanth R. Banavar and Amos Maritan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0202212},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
RevTex: 4 pages + 3 eps-figures. Minor Revision and figure 3 replaced. To appear in Phys. Rev. Letters