Proceedings of SPIE present the original research papers presented at SPIE conferences and other high-quality conferences in the broad-ranging fields of optics and photonics. These books provide prompt access to the latest innovations in research and technology in their respective fields. Proceedings of SPIE are among the most cited references in patent literature.

This book concerns the use of concepts from statistical physics in the description of financial systems. The authors illustrate the scaling concepts used in probability theory, critical phenomena, and fully developed turbulent fluids. These concepts are then applied to financial time series. The authors also present a stochastic model that displays several of the statistical properties observed in empirical data. Statistical physics concepts such as stochastic dynamics, short- and long-range correlations, self-similarity and scaling permit an understanding of the global behaviour of economic systems without first having to work out a detailed microscopic description of the system. Physicists will find the application of statistical physics concepts to economic systems interesting. Economists and workers in the financial world will find useful the presentation of empirical analysis methods and well-formulated theoretical tools that might help describe systems composed of a huge number of interacting subsystems.

Financial fluctuations were generally neglected in classical ecnomics and their basic statistical properties have only recently been elucidated in the emerging field of econophysics, a new science that analyzes data using methods developed by statistical physics, such as chaos, fractals, and phase transitions. This volume is the proceedings of a workshop at which leading international researchers in this discipline discussed their most recent results and examined the validity of the empirical laws of econophysics. Topics include stock market prices and foreign exchange rates, income distribution, market anomalies, and risk management. The papers herein relate econophysics to other models, present new models, and illustrate the mechanisms by which financial fluctuations occur using actual financial data. Containing the most recent econophysics results, this volume will serve as an indispensable reference for economic theorists and practitioners alike.

This book provides the first extensive analytic comparison between models and results from econophysics and financial economics in an accessible and common vocabulary. Unlike other publications dedicated to econophysics, it situates this field in the evolution of financial economics by laying the foundations for common theoretical framework and models.

Filling the gap for an up-to-date textbook in this relatively new interdisciplinary research field, this volume provides readers with a thorough and comprehensive introduction. Based on extensive teaching experience, it includes numerous worked examples and highlights in special biographical boxes some of the most outstanding personalities and their contributions to both physics and economics. The whole is rounded off by several appendices containing important background material.

Annotation The scope of the July 1999 conference covers Brownian ratchets, stochastic resonance, biomedicine, semiconductors, electronic devices, lasers, turbulence, and spectroscopy. Among the topics of the 66 papers are quantum stress tensor fluctuations, signatures of electron-electron interaction in nanoelectric device shot noise, the scale invariance of 1/f noise, Parrondo's paradoxical games, and what physicists can contribute to economics. Other topics include additive noise and noise-induced nonequilibrium phase transitions, entropy generation in computation and the second law of thermodynamics, high frequency noise modeling in MOSFETs, a percolative approach to resistance fluctuations, short time-scales in the Kramers problem, activated escape of driven systems, and numerical methods for systems excited by white noise. No subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This book focuses on nonextensive statistical mechanics, a current generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) statistical mechanics. Conceived nearly 150 years ago by Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs, the BG theory, one of the greatest monuments of contemporary physics, exhibits many impressive successes in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computational sciences. Presently, several thousands of publications by scientists around the world have been dedicated to its nonextensive generalization. A variety of applications have emerged in complex systems and its mathematical grounding is by now well advanced. Since the first edition release thirteen years ago, there has been a vast amount of new results in the field, all of which have been incorporated in this comprehensive second edition. Heavily revised and updated with new sections and figures, the second edition remains the go-to text on the subject. A pedagogical introduction to the BG theory concepts and their generalizations – nonlinear dynamics, extensivity of the nonadditive entropy, global correlations, generalization of the standard CLT’s, complex networks, among others – is presented in this book, as well as a selection of paradigmatic applications in various sciences together with diversified experimental verifications of some of its predictions. Introduction to Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics is suitable for students and researchers with an interest in complex systems and statistical physics.