Kinetic exchange models: From molecular physics to social science

TL;DR

This paper explores kinetic exchange models originating from physics and their application to social sciences, including economics and sociology, highlighting their adaptability for simulating social phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces the use of kinetic exchange models from physics to analyze and simulate diverse social science problems, demonstrating their versatility.

Findings

Models can simulate income and wealth distributions.

Applicable to opinion dynamics in sociology.

Flexible for various social science simulations.

Abstract

We discuss several multi-agent models that have their origin in the kinetic exchange theory of statistical mechanics and have been recently applied to a variety of problems in the social sciences. This class of models can be easily adapted for simulations in areas other than physics, such as the modeling of income and wealth distributions in economics and opinion dynamics in sociology.