IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v51y2001i1d10.1023_a1010556426328.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Application of statistical physics methods and conceptsto the study of science & technology systems

Author

Listed:
  • Luis A. N. Amaral

    (Boston University)

  • P. Gopikrishnan

    (Boston University)

  • Kaushik Matia

    (Boston University)

  • Vasiliki Plerou

    (Boston University
    Boston College)

  • H. E. Stanley

    (Boston University)

Abstract

We apply methods and concepts of statistical physics to the study of science & technology(S&T) systems. Specifically, our research is motivated by two concepts of fundamentalimportance in modern statistical physics: scaling and universality. We try to identify robust,universal, characteristics of the evolution of S&T systems that can provide guidance to forecastingthe impact of changes in funding. We quantify the production of research in a novel fashioninspired by our previous study of the growth dynamics of business firms. We study the productionof research from the point of view both of inputs (R&D funding) and of outputs (publications andpatents) and find the existence of scaling laws describing the growth of these quantities.We also analyze R&D systems of different countries to test the "universality" of our results.We hypothesize that the proposed methods may be particularly useful for fields of S&T (or forlevels of aggregation) for which either not enough information is available, or for which evolutionis so fast that there is not enough time to collect enough data to make an informed decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Luis A. N. Amaral & P. Gopikrishnan & Kaushik Matia & Vasiliki Plerou & H. E. Stanley, 2001. "Application of statistical physics methods and conceptsto the study of science & technology systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 51(1), pages 9-36, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:51:y:2001:i:1:d:10.1023_a:1010556426328
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1010556426328
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1023/A:1010556426328
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1010556426328?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. Parameswaran Gopikrishnan & Vasiliki Plerou & Luis A. Nunes Amaral & Martin Meyer & H. Eugene Stanley, 1999. "Scaling of the distribution of fluctuations of financial market indices," Papers cond-mat/9905305, arXiv.org.
    2. H F Moed & Th N van Leeuwen & M S Visser, 1999. "Trends in publication output and impact of universities in the Netherlands," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 60-67, April.
    3. V. Plerou & P. Gopikrishnan & L. A. N. Amaral & M. Meyer & H. E. Stanley, 1999. "Scaling of the distribution of price fluctuations of individual companies," Papers cond-mat/9907161, arXiv.org.
    4. Pagan, Adrian, 1996. "The econometrics of financial markets," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 15-102, May.
    5. Youngki Lee & Luis A. N. Amaral & David Canning & Martin Meyer & H. Eugene Stanley, 1998. "Universal features in the growth dynamics of complex organizations," Papers cond-mat/9804100, arXiv.org.
    6. Mansfield, Edwin, 1991. "Academic research and industrial innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 1-12, February.
    7. L. A. N. Amaral & S. V. Buldyrev & S. Havlin & H. Leschhorn & P. Maass & M. A. Salinger & H. E. Stanley & M. H. R. Stanley, 1997. "Scaling behavior in economics: I. Empirical results for company growth," Papers cond-mat/9702082, arXiv.org.
    8. M. Marchi & M. Rocchi, 1999. "Summing up approaches to the study of science and technology indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 46(1), pages 39-49, September.
    9. Hall, Bronwyn H, 1987. "The Relationship between Firm Size and Firm Growth in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 583-606, June.
    10. Boyan Jovanovic, 1993. "The Diversification of Production," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 24(1 Microec), pages 197-247.
    11. Michael Gort, 1962. "Introduction to "Diversification and Integration in American Industry"," NBER Chapters, in: Diversification and Integration in American Industry, pages 3-7, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Michael Gort, 1962. "Diversification and Integration in American Industry," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gort62-1.
    13. Robert Summers & Alan Heston, 1991. "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950–1988," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 327-368.
    14. Benoit Mandelbrot, 2015. "The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Anastasios G Malliaris & William T Ziemba (ed.), THE WORLD SCIENTIFIC HANDBOOK OF FUTURES MARKETS, chapter 3, pages 39-78, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Vasiliki Plerou & Luís A. Nunes Amaral & Parameswaran Gopikrishnan & Martin Meyer & H. Eugene Stanley, 1999. "Similarities between the growth dynamics of university research and of competitive economic activities," Nature, Nature, vol. 400(6743), pages 433-437, July.
    16. Henk F. Moed & Marc Luwel, 1999. "The business of research," Nature, Nature, vol. 400(6743), pages 411-412, July.
    17. Marc Luwel, 2000. "A Bibliometric Profile of Flemish Research in Natural, Life and Technical Sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 47(2), pages 281-302, February.
    18. Plamen Ch. Ivanov & Luís A. Nunes Amaral & Ary L. Goldberger & Shlomo Havlin & Michael G. Rosenblum & Zbigniew R. Struzik & H. Eugene Stanley, 1999. "Multifractality in human heartbeat dynamics," Nature, Nature, vol. 399(6735), pages 461-465, June.
    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. Stanley, H.E. & Gabaix, Xavier & Gopikrishnan, Parameswaran & Plerou, Vasiliki, 2007. "Economic fluctuations and statistical physics: Quantifying extremely rare and less rare events in finance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 382(1), pages 286-301.
    2. S. L. Sangam & Uma B. Arali & C. G. Patil & Ronald Rousseau, 2018. "Growth of the hepatitis literature over the period 1976–2015: What can the relative priority index teach us?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 351-368, April.
    3. Frank Havemann & Michael Heinz & Roland Wagner-Döbler, 2004. "Growth dynamics of German university enrolments and of scientific disciplines in the 19th century: Scaling behaviour under weak competitive pressure," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(3), pages 283-294, August.
    4. Stanley, H. Eugene & Plerou, Vasiliki & Gabaix, Xavier, 2008. "A statistical physics view of financial fluctuations: Evidence for scaling and universality," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(15), pages 3967-3981.

    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. Amaral, L.A.N. & Gopikrishnan, P. & Plerou, V. & Stanley, H.E., 2001. "A model for the growth dynamics of economic organizations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 299(1), pages 127-136.
    2. Stanley, H.E. & Gopikrishnan, P. & Plerou, V. & Amaral, L.A.N., 2000. "Quantifying fluctuations in economic systems by adapting methods of statistical physics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 287(3), pages 339-361.
    3. Stanley, H.E & Amaral, L.A.N & Gopikrishnan, P & Ivanov, P.Ch & Keitt, T.H & Plerou, V, 2000. "Scale invariance and universality: organizing principles in complex systems," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 281(1), pages 60-68.
    4. Stanley, H.E & Amaral, L.A.N & Gopikrishnan, P & Plerou, V, 2000. "Scale invariance and universality of economic fluctuations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 283(1), pages 31-41.
    5. Stanley, H.Eugene, 2000. "Exotic statistical physics: Applications to biology, medicine, and economics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 285(1), pages 1-17.
    6. Stanley, H.Eugene, 2003. "Statistical physics and economic fluctuations: do outliers exist?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 318(1), pages 279-292.
    7. Stanley, H.E. & Amaral, L.A.N. & Gabaix, X. & Gopikrishnan, P. & Plerou, V., 2001. "Similarities and differences between physics and economics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 299(1), pages 1-15.
    8. Stanley, H.E. & Gabaix, Xavier & Gopikrishnan, Parameswaran & Plerou, Vasiliki, 2007. "Economic fluctuations and statistical physics: Quantifying extremely rare and less rare events in finance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 382(1), pages 286-301.
    9. Jovanovic, Franck & Schinckus, Christophe, 2017. "Econophysics and Financial Economics: An Emerging Dialogue," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190205034.
    10. Stanley, H. Eugene & Plerou, Vasiliki & Gabaix, Xavier, 2008. "A statistical physics view of financial fluctuations: Evidence for scaling and universality," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(15), pages 3967-3981.
    11. Hernan Mondani & Petter Holme & Fredrik Liljeros, 2014. "Fat-Tailed Fluctuations in the Size of Organizations: The Role of Social Influence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-9, July.
    12. Buldyrev, Sergey V. & Salinger, Michael A. & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2016. "A statistical physics implementation of Coase׳s theory of the firm," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 536-557.
    13. Sun-Chong Wang & Sai-Ping Li & Chung-Ching Tai & Shu-Heng Che, 2009. "Statistical properties of an experimental political futures market," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 9-16.
    14. Gabaix, Xavier & Gopikrishnan, Parameswaran & Plerou, Vasiliki & Eugene Stanley, H., 2008. "Quantifying and understanding the economics of large financial movements," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 303-319, January.
    15. Stanley, H.E. & Buldyrev, S.V. & Franzese, G. & Havlin, S. & Mallamace, F. & Kumar, P. & Plerou, V. & Preis, T., 2010. "Correlated randomness and switching phenomena," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(15), pages 2880-2893.
    16. Suárez-García, Pablo & Gómez-Ullate, David, 2013. "Scaling, stability and distribution of the high-frequency returns of the Ibex35 index," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(6), pages 1409-1417.
    17. Anirban Chakraborti & Ioane Muni Toke & Marco Patriarca & Frederic Abergel, 2011. "Econophysics review: I. Empirical facts," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(7), pages 991-1012.
    18. J. Doyne Farmer, 2000. "Physicists Attempt To Scale The Ivory Towers Of Finance," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(03), pages 311-333.
    19. Gu, Gao-Feng & Xiong, Xiong & Zhang, Yong-Jie & Chen, Wei & Zhang, Wei & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2016. "Stylized facts of price gaps in limit order books," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 48-58.
    20. Marcin Wk{a}torek & Stanis{l}aw Dro.zd.z & Jaros{l}aw Kwapie'n & Ludovico Minati & Pawe{l} O'swik{e}cimka & Marek Stanuszek, 2020. "Multiscale characteristics of the emerging global cryptocurrency market," Papers 2010.15403, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:scient:v:51:y:2001:i:1:d:10.1023_a:1010556426328. 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.