IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/new/wpaper/1606.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Principle of Social Scaling

Author

Listed:
  • Paulo dos Santos

    (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research)

Abstract

This paper motivates the content and analytical significance of processes of “social scaling” in competitive economic settings, postulating a general Principle that describes the regulations they impose on the functioning of certain economic systems. Economic competition often defines behavioral relationships between individual measures of certain variables and average or social measures of themselves. These relationships ensure a number of behaviorally significant economic variables are socially scaled measures. Individual values of such variables are subject to systemic interdependences, which may take the form of aggregate first-moment constraints on their distributions. The paper shows how processes of social scaling in capital and labor markets can help account for the observed frequency distributions of wage income and Tobin’s q, suggesting such processes may be a pervasive in economic systems. Finally, the paper’s discussion illustrates and motivates the distinctive usefulness of statistical-mechanical methods in Economics, both in defining new conceptualizations of the relationship between individual agencies and aggregate regulations in economic systems, and in the development of logically robust observational methods in economic analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Paulo dos Santos, 2016. "The Principle of Social Scaling," Working Papers 1606, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:new:wpaper:1606
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/econ/2016/NSSR_WP_062016.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2016
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Foley Duncan K., 1994. "A Statistical Equilibrium Theory of Markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 321-345, April.
    2. Alfarano, Simone & Milakovic, Mishael, 2008. "Does classical competition explain the statistical features of firm growth?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 272-274, December.
    3. Shaikh, Anwar & Papanikolaou, Nikolaos & Wiener, Noe, 2014. "Race, gender and the econophysics of income distribution in the USA," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 415(C), pages 54-60.
    4. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June.
    5. Stewart C. Myers & Nicholas S. Majluf, 1984. "Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have," NBER Working Papers 1396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Markus P. A. Schneider, 2013. "Evidence for Multiple Labor Market Segments: An Entropic Analysis of US Earned Income, 1996-2007," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 22(2), pages 60-98, June.
    7. Arrow, Kenneth J, 1994. "Methodological Individualism and Social Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 1-9, May.
    8. Silva, A. Christian & Prange, Richard E. & Yakovenko, Victor M., 2004. "Exponential distribution of financial returns at mesoscopic time lags: a new stylized fact," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 344(1), pages 227-235.
    9. Victor M. Yakovenko & J. Barkley Rosser, 2009. "Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income," Papers 0905.1518, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2009.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Paulo L. dos Santos, 2017. "The Principle of Social Scaling," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2017, pages 1-9, December.
    2. Scharfenaker, Ellis & dos Santos, Paulo L., 2015. "The distribution and regulation of Tobin’s q," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 191-194.
    3. Oh, Ilfan, 2019. "Autonomy of profit rate distribution and its dynamics from firm size measures: A statistical equilibrium approach," BERG Working Paper Series 146, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    4. Ellis Scharfenaker, 2022. "Statistical Equilibrium Methods In Analytical Political Economy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 276-309, April.
    5. Jangho Yang, 2018. "Information Theoretic Approaches In Economics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 940-960, July.
    6. Scharfenaker, Ellis, 2020. "Implications of quantal response statistical equilibrium," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    7. Yong Tao & Xiangjun Wu & Tao Zhou & Weibo Yan & Yanyuxiang Huang & Han Yu & Benedict Mondal & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2019. "Exponential structure of income inequality: evidence from 67 countries," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(2), pages 345-376, June.
    8. Markus P. A. Schneider, 2018. "Revisiting the thermal and superthermal two-class distribution of incomes: A critical perspective," Papers 1804.06341, arXiv.org.
    9. Ellis Scharfenaker, Markus P.A. Schneider, 2019. "Labor Market Segmentation and the Distribution of Income: New Evidence from Internal Census Bureau Data," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2019_08, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    10. Di Guilmi, Corrado & Carvalho, Laura, 2017. "The dynamics of leverage in a demand-driven model with heterogeneous firms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 70-90.
    11. Nam, Changwoo, 2016. "Impact of Corporate Tax Cuts on Corporate Investment," KDI Policy Forum 264, Korea Development Institute (KDI).
    12. Khémiri, Wafa & Noubbigh, Hédi, 2020. "Size-threshold effect in debt-firm performance nexus in the sub-Saharan region: A Panel Smooth Transition Regression approach," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 335-344.
    13. Dirk Czarnitzki & Hanna Hottenrott & Susanne Thorwarth, 2011. "Industrial research versus development investment: the implications of financial constraints," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 35(3), pages 527-544.
    14. Florian Meier, 2020. "The Age of Cheap Money and Passive Investing: Are Pro Forma Earnings Value Relevant?," Journal of Finance and Investment Analysis, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 9(2), pages 1-1.
    15. Bruinshoofd Allard & Kool Clemens, 2002. "The Determinants of Corporate Liquidity in the Netherlands," Research Memorandum 014, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    16. Jie Ning & Matthew J. Sobel, 2018. "Production and Capacity Management with Internal Financing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 147-160, February.
    17. Stolowy, Hervé & Jeanjean, Thomas & Erkens, Michael, 2011. "The economic consequences of increasing the international visibility of financial reports," HEC Research Papers Series 957, HEC Paris.
    18. Mark Schankerman, 1991. "Revisions of Investment Plans and the Stock Market Rate of Return," STICERD - Economics of Industry Papers 05, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    19. Chan-Jane Lin & Tawei Wang & Chao-Jung Pan, 2016. "Financial reporting quality and investment decisions for family firms," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 499-532, June.
    20. Fulghieri, Paolo & Lukin, Dmitry, 2001. "Information production, dilution costs, and optimal security design," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 3-42, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social Scaling; Economic Distribution; Statistical Mechanics; Observational Economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • C18 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Methodolical Issues: General
    • C69 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:new:wpaper:1606. 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: Mark Setterfield (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/denewus.html .

    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.