A Survey into Evidence of Zipf’s Law among Indian Socio-Economic Variables

Kausik Gangopadhyay

No 223, Working papers from Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode

Abstract: Zipf’s Law is an empirical phenomenon observed in many natural systems. The distribution of a physical variable demonstrates sharp rise at the right tail under this law. The occurrence of this law is pervasive among the physical variables. Econophysics, a discipline named so by Eugene H. Stanley, studies the application of physical principles among variables related to human action mostly related to socio-economic variables. This paper surveys the studies on the existence of Zipf’s law among Indian socio-economic variables. We present the evidence on economic variables, in particular income, wealth and consumption distribution. The other socio-economic variable of our choice is city size distribution. In all cases, the Zipf’s law is established with different values for the Pareto exponent.

Keywords: Econophysics; sociophysics; Zipf’s Law; Power Law; Pareto exponent; income distribution; wealth distribution; consumption distribution; city size distribution. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2017
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