Sociological and Economic Inequality and the Second Law

Oded Kafri

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: There are two fair ways to distribute particles in boxes. The first one is the Casino’s way, namely an equal chance to any box. The second one is the thermodynamic way, namely an equal chance to any different configuration of particles and boxes. The second way, calculated here, yields an uneven distribution of the particles in the boxes. It is shown that this distribution fits well to sociological phenomena, such as to the distribution of votes in polls and the distribution of wealth. This distribution yields the Benford law (the distribution of digits in numerical data), as a private case.

Keywords: wealth distribution; Power law; Zipf law; Thermodynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 A14 C16 C46 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-05-07
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:9175

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