English

Ideal Gas-Like Distributions in Economics: Effects of Saving Propensity

Statistical Mechanics 2008-12-02 v1 General Finance

Abstract

We consider the ideal-gas models of trading markets, where each agent is identified with a gas molecule and each trading as an elastic or money-conserving (two-body) collision. Unlike in the ideal gas, we introduce saving propensity λ\lambda of agents, such that each agent saves a fraction λ\lambda of its money and trades with the rest. We show the steady-state money or wealth distribution in a market is Gibbs-like for λ=0\lambda=0, has got a non-vanishing most-probable value for λ0\lambda \ne 0 and Pareto-like when λ\lambda is widely distributed among the agents. We compare these results with observations on wealth distributions of various countries.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0302147,
  title  = {Ideal Gas-Like Distributions in Economics: Effects of Saving Propensity},
  author = {Bikas K. Chakrabarti and Arnab Chatterjee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0302147},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 eps figures. To be published in `Application of Econophysics', Ed. H. Takayasu, Springer-Verlag, Tokyo (2003): Proc. 2nd. Nikkei Symposium on Econophysics, Tokyo, Nov. 2002