2013/12/02 by Jack Peterson, Purushottam D. Dixit, Ken A. Dill · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.1320578110
published as PNAS 110 (2013) 20380-20385 · 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 table
openalex publication_date 2013/12/02 · arxiv created 2015/01/06 · arxiv updated 2015/01/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Probability distributions having power-law tails are observed in a broad range of social, economic, and biological systems. We describe here a potentially useful common framework. We derive distribution functions for situations in which a "joiner particle" k pays some form of price to enter a community of size , where costs are subject to economies of scale. Maximizing the Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy subject to this energy-like constraint predicts a distribution having a power-law tail; it reduces to the Boltzmann distribution in the absence of economies of scale. We show that the predicted function gives excellent fits to 13 different distribution functions, ranging from friendship links in social networks, to protein-protein interactions, to the severity of terrorist attacks. This approach may give useful insights into when to expect power-law distributions in the natural and social sciences.