Econophysics And Companies

This page intentionally left blank Econophysics and Companies Econophysics is an emerging interdisciplinary field that takes advantage of the concepts and methods of statistical physics to analyse economic phenomena. This book expands the explanatory scope of econophysics to the real economy by using methods from statistical physics to analyse the success and failure of companies. Using large data sets of companies and income-earners in Japan and Europe, a distinguished team of researchers show how these methods allow us to analyse companies, from huge corporations to small firms, as heterogeneous agents interacting at multiple layers of complex networks. They then show how successful this approach is in explaining a wide range of recent findings relating to the dynamics of companies. With mathematics kept to a minimum, the book is not only a lively introduction to the field of econophysics but also provides fresh insights into company behaviour. hideaki aoyama is Professor of Physics at Kyoto University, Japan. yoshi fujiwara is Research Fellow at Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International (ATR), Kyoto, Japan. yuichi ikeda is Senior Researcher at Hitachi Ltd, Hitachi Research Laboratory, Japan. hiroshi iyetomi is Professor of Physics at Niigata University, Japan. wataru souma is Associate Professor of Physics at Nihon University, Japan. Econophysics and Companies Statistical Life and Death in Complex Business Networks Hideaki Aoyama Yoshi Fujiwara Yuichi Ikeda Hiroshi Iyetomi and Wataru Souma CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521191494 © Hideaki Aoyama, Yoshi Fujiwara, Yuichi Ikeda, Hiroshi Iyetomi and Wataru Souma 2010 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2010 ISBN-13 978-0-511-78952-6 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-19149-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents List of figures List of tables About the authors Foreword Preface Prologue 1 New insights 1.1 A scientific approach 1.1.1 Science of complex systems 1.1.2 The emergence of econophysics 1.2 Distributions and fluctuations 1.3 Are networks complex? 1