IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/qualqt/v52y2018i3d10.1007_s11135-017-0504-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A multiplicative process for generating the rank-order distribution of UK election results

Author

Listed:
  • Trevor Fenner

    (Birkbeck, University of London)

  • Mark Levene

    (Birkbeck, University of London)

  • George Loizou

    (Birkbeck, University of London)

Abstract

Human dynamics and sociophysics suggest statistical models that may explain and provide us with a better understanding of social phenomena. Here we propose a generative multiplicative decrease model that gives rise to a rank-order distribution and allows us to analyse the results of the last three UK parliamentary elections. We provide empirical evidence that the additive Weibull distribution, which can be generated from our model, is a close fit to the electoral data, offering a novel interpretation of the recent election results.

Suggested Citation

  • Trevor Fenner & Mark Levene & George Loizou, 2018. "A multiplicative process for generating the rank-order distribution of UK election results," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 1069-1079, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:52:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11135-017-0504-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11135-017-0504-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11135-017-0504-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11135-017-0504-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December.
    2. Saralees Nadarajah, 2009. "Bathtub-shaped failure rate functions," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 43(5), pages 855-863, September.
    3. John Curtice & David Firth, 2008. "Exit polling in a cold climate: the BBC–ITV experience in Britain in 2005," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(3), pages 509-539, June.
    4. Serge Galam, 2008. "Sociophysics: A Review Of Galam Models," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(03), pages 409-440.
    5. Damián H. Zanette, 2008. "Multiplicative Processes and City Sizes," Springer Books, in: Sergio Albeverio & Denise Andrey & Paolo Giordano & Alberto Vancheri (ed.), The Dynamics of Complex Urban Systems, pages 457-472, Springer.
    6. Artur J. Lemonte & Gauss M. Cordeiro & Edwin M. M. Ortega, 2014. "On the Additive Weibull Distribution," Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(10-12), pages 2066-2080, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mark Levene & Aleksejus Kononovicius, 2018. "Empirical Survival Jensen-Shannon Divergence as a Goodness-of-Fit Measure for Maximum Likelihood Estimation and Curve Fitting," Papers 1809.11052, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2019.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jovanovic, Franck & Schinckus, Christophe, 2017. "Econophysics and Financial Economics: An Emerging Dialogue," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190205034.
    2. Bosker, Maarten & Brakman, Steven & Garretsen, Harry & Schramm, Marc, 2008. "A century of shocks: The evolution of the German city size distribution 1925-1999," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 330-347, July.
    3. Klein, Alexander & Leunig, Tim, 2013. "Gibrat’s Law and the British Industrial Revolution," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 146, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Satyajit Chatterjee & Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg, 2012. "Spinoffs And The Market For Ideas," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(1), pages 53-93, February.
    5. Luc Christiaensen & Ravi Kanbur, 2017. "Secondary Towns and Poverty Reduction: Refocusing the Urbanization Agenda," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 405-419, October.
    6. Rafael González-Val & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia & María Vera-Cabello, 2015. "Size distributions for all cities: Which one is best?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(1), pages 177-196, March.
    7. González-Val, Rafael, 2019. "Lognormal city size distribution and distance," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 7-10.
    8. Alves, L.G.A. & Ribeiro, H.V. & Lenzi, E.K. & Mendes, R.S., 2014. "Empirical analysis on the connection between power-law distributions and allometries for urban indicators," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 409(C), pages 175-182.
    9. Stephen J. Redding, 2010. "The Empirics Of New Economic Geography," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 297-311, February.
    10. Segarra, Agustí & Teruel, Mercedes, 2012. "An appraisal of firm size distribution: Does sample size matter?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 314-328.
    11. González-Val, Rafael & Lanaspa, Luis & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2013. "Gibrat’s law for cities, growth regressions and sample size," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 367-369.
    12. Huang, Siyu & Shi, Yi & Chen, Qinghua & Li, Xiaomeng, 2022. "The growth path of high-tech industries: Statistical laws and evolution demands," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 603(C).
    13. Petra Besenhard, 2024. "Exploring skill distribution tails through stochastic dominance," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(4), pages 714-720, June.
    14. Jesús Clemente & Rafael González-Val & Irene Olloqui, 2011. "Zipf’s and Gibrat’s laws for migrations," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 47(1), pages 235-248, August.
    15. Hutzler, S. & Sommer, C. & Richmond, P., 2016. "On the relationship between income, fertility rates and the state of democracy in society," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 452(C), pages 9-18.
    16. Oshiro, Jun & Sato, Yasuhiro, 2021. "Industrial structure in urban accounting," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    17. Birkmaier, Daniel & Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2014. "The Matthew effect in economics reconsidered," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 880-889.
    18. Albouy, David & Behrens, Kristian & Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric & Seegert, Nathan, 2019. "The optimal distribution of population across cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 102-113.
    19. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    20. Célestin Coquidé & José Lages & Dima Shepelyansky, 2024. "Opinion Formation in the World Trade Network," Post-Print hal-04461784, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:52:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11135-017-0504-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.