Related papers: Escalation dynamics and the severity of wars
Models of how things spread often assume that transmission mechanisms are fixed over time. However, social contagions--the spread of ideas, beliefs, innovations--can lose or gain in momentum as they spread: ideas can get reinforced, beliefs…
Theoretical ecologists have long sought to understand how the persistence of populations depends on biotic and abiotic factors. Classical work showed that demographic stochasticity causes the mean time to extinction to increase…
We study a behavioral SIR model with time-varying costs of distancing. The two main causes of the variation in the cost of distancing we explore are distancing fatigue and public policies (lockdowns). We show that for a second wave of an…
We investigate the role of networks of alliances in preventing (multilateral) interstate wars. We first show that, in the absence of international trade, no network of alliances is peaceful and stable. We then show that international trade…
The dynamics of one species chemical kinetics is studied. Chemical reactions are modelled by means of continuous time Markov processes whose probability distribution obeys a suitable master equation. A large deviation theory is formally…
Competing bimodal coalitions among a group of actors are discussed. First, a model from political sciences is revisited. Most of the model statements are found not to be contained in the model. Second, a new coalition model is built. It…
Risk-driven behavior provides a feedback mechanism through which individuals both shape and are collectively affected by an epidemic. We introduce a general and flexible compartmental model to study the effect of heterogeneity in the…
The distribution of inter-occurrence time between seismic events is a quantity of great interest in seismic risk assessment. We evaluate this distribution for different models of earthquakes occurrence and follow two distinct approaches:…
We investigate the emergence of extreme opinion trends in society by employing statistical physics modeling and analysis on polls that inquire about a wide range of issues such as religion, economics, politics, abortion, extramarital sex,…
I study the relationship between the likelihood of a violent domestic conflict and the risk that such a conflict "externalizes" (i.e. spreads to another country by creating an international dispute). I consider a situation in which a…
The complexity of armed conflicts is expressed in the number of fatalities that may span several orders of magnitude. This study presents a minimalist, physics-informed approach to estimating the likelihood of extreme conflict fatalities at…
The classical Lanchester's model is shortly reviewed and analysed, with particular attention to the critical issues that intrinsically arise from the mathematical formalization of the problem. We then generalize a particular version of such…
Studies of human attention dynamics analyses how attention is focused on specific topics, issues or people. In online social media, there are clear signs of exogenous shocks, bursty dynamics, and an exponential or powerlaw lifetime…
Many complex systems exhibit extreme events far more often than expected for a normal distribution. This work examines how self-similar bursts of activity across several orders of magnitude can emerge from first principles in systems that…
We use evolutionary game theory to examine how conflict-averse centrism can facilitate authoritarian success in polarized political conflicts. Such conflicts are often asymmetric: authoritarian actors can employ norm-breaking or coercive…
We extend the scope of the dynamical theory of extreme values to cover phenomena that do not happen instantaneously, but evolve over a finite, albeit unknown at the onset, time interval. We consider complex dynamical systems, composed of…
We introduce and analyze several variants of a system of differential equations which model the dynamics of social outbursts, such as riots. The systems involve the coupling of an explicit variable representing the intensity of rioting…
The frequency and magnitude of weather extreme events have increased significantly during the past few years in response to anthropogenic climate change. However, global statistical characteristics and underlying physical mechanisms are…
We study a dynamic model of the relationship between two people where the states depend on the "power" in the relationship. We perform a comprehensive analysis of stability of the system, and determine a set of conditions under which stable…
Understanding how size influences the internal characteristics of a system is a crucial concern across various fields. Concepts like scale invariance, universalities, and fractals are fundamental to this inquiry and find application in…