Arxiv Laundry List

Arxiv Laundry List

Papers to read when I get free-time:

Emergence of Power Law in a Market with Mixed Models

M. Ali Saif, Prashant M. Gade

We investigate the problem of wealth distribution from the viewpoint of asset exchange. Robust nature of Pareto's law across economies, ideologies and nations suggests that this could be an outcome of trading strategies. However, the simple asset exchange models fail to reproduce this feature. A yardsale(YS) model in which amount put on the bet is a fraction of minimum of the two players leads to condensation of wealth in hands of some agent while theft and fraud(TF) model in which the amount to be exchanged is a fraction of loser's wealth leads to an exponential distribution of wealth. We show that if we allow few agents to follow a different model than others, {\it i.e.} there are some agents following TF model while rest follow YS model, it leads to distribution with power law tails. Similar effect is observed when one carries out transactions for a fraction of one's wealth using TF model and for the rest YS model is used. We also observe a power law tail in wealth distribution if we allow the agents to follow either of the models with some probability.


Effects of introduction of new resources and fragmentation of existing resources on limiting wealth distribution in asset exchange models

M. Ali Saif, Prashant M. Gade

Pareto law, which states that wealth distribution in societies have a power-law tail, has been a subject of intensive investigations in statistical physics community. Several models have been employed to explain this behavior. However, most of the agent based models assume the conservation of number of agents and wealth. Both these assumptions are unrealistic. In this paper, we study the limiting wealth distribution when one or both of these assumptions are not valid. Given the universality of the law, we have tried to study the wealth distribution from the asset exchange models point of view. We consider models in which a) new agents enter the market at constant rate b) richer agents fragment with higher probability introducing newer agents in the system c) both fragmentation and entry of new agents is taking place. While models a) and c) do not conserve total wealth or number of agents, model b) conserves total wealth. All these models lead to a power-law tail in the wealth distribution pointing to the possibility that more generalized asset exchange models could help us to explain emergence of power-law tail in wealth distribution.

Virtual Desktop

Thin Computing

Cloud Computing

Grid Computing

Cloud Computing for the Rest of us. Symmetry Breaking.



I want to learn more.

To The Wedding

Inside the cab, on our way to Antipolo City to attend a friend’s wedding, we, Jayr, Pow and I, had an intense debate on the plight of the Filipino people and the incapacity, as blindly observed by most people, of the government to supply the needs of its people. My thoughts that time stood on the ground where things could be viewed macroscopically, treating society, people and government, its co-dependent components, as one intricate interconnected system. One cannot exist without the other. People need to exist to have government and governance is important to have a stable society, to maintain a cohesive collection of interacting human beings. Government is a veritable result, unavoidable one, of social species living in assembly in bounded area. People and government, government and people, are the two major components of the society for us unconventionally, in functional and modern definition, to call it as such.

I can’t really remember how we started the conversation, but the thoughts on this matter we were throwing to each other are still vivid in my mind. Jayr blamed the government on the current state of the Filipino. In his opinion, as he asserted, the government did not meet its responsibilities to the Filipino people. I disagreed. For me, we cannot blame everything to the government. For a society, to advance its state, each component should comply and meet its role in concerted effort for all political and economic platforms to work smoothly. The economic platforms of the government this administration period are robust enough to alleviate the economic state of the Filipino. However, patience is needed because these platforms take time to achieve their converging goal. Not just patience, every member of the Filipino should do they share, because any massive economic reform cannot be pushed forward if there is no concerted effort of the collective to move it forward. Everything boils down to intricate and interdependent relationship of the people and their government.

With the understanding of this intricate relationship, we can now synthesize the clear picture of the events in Filipino society. For me, as I can see it, the government is indeed fairly doing its parts, as you can see in all massive economic restructuring. I believe, the government, and specifically the President, has a holistic and committed agenda to uplift the economic state of this nation. Now, after we have seen the effort of the government, let’s focus our attention to the other component of the society, the people. Are they doing their share? We cannot say that the whole Filipino populace is not doing its share, certain classes only. I observed that Class C and D Filipino masses are not doing their share. Their doubts and clamors hinder the whole nation to move forward. How I wish their trust and understanding of the Philippine governance should grow up. They are the ones who create a vicious cycle of the economic cancer of the Philippine society. Their old system of beliefs and skeptical view of the economic agenda of any President, who somehow they elected, feed the soul of the opportunist, monstrous, voracious, and greedy politicians, as heightened by the selfish and irresponsible media. These are the members of the society, most specifically the Filipino, who have done nothing at all but ruin all the good intentions of the government. They have exaggerated the concept of democracy, and those who have understood the clear and technical workings of it have also exploited this frailty of lower Filipino classes.

The other thing I iterated during our debate is the weakness of some of the lower classes of Filipinos, the attitude of misplaced contentment and love of quick money. Because of these I claimed that they are not doing their share. They are contented to wake up by noon and sit around doing nothing at all waiting for the government to provide them their day to day needs. Sometimes, I believe they have this concept of government as provider of their actual real needs, like any politician giving them rice, canned goods, etc. daily. They are expecting that someone will work for them to feed them. The government exists not to provide us tangible things in the form of packaged goods handed out to us daily. It exists to provide us ways and means to feed ourselves. These classes of Filipino people did not absorb the teaching of feeding someone with fish and teaching someone to fish. Another frustrating attitude of these classes is the love of quick-money. Most believe that they can get money easily, by just sitting around the corner and waiting for someone to give them money. One case, that I had learned few years ago, that proved my thoughts on the Filipino misplaced contentment and laziness, was the mass housing project of the government such as BLISS, etc. I found out that some beneficiaries of the housing sold their units and went back to the squatter areas and beg the government again to provide them housing units. Imagine this, they were contended to live in squatter area in exchange of the cash that they can get from selling their units as provided by the government. This is indeed misplaced contentment.

Jayr scolded me because of this. He told me that I was judgmental and prejudicial. He asked me if I ever tried to live with them and had fully understood the plight of the lower class Filipinos. Yes, I tried to be with them for years and I realized that they were the one who created that mess in their lives and not the government. Seeing them in cyclical miserable lifestyle with contentment and seeing their reluctance to do something with it further proved my beliefs that the Filipino masses are just looking for scapegoats for all the mistakes that they have done in their lives. It is not the responsibility of the government to wake them up in the morning and tell them eat your breakfast and go to work. I stressed out to Jayr that it was sympathy that made him to be on their side and not because of logical understanding of the workings of collective system. He was touched because he saw their miserable situation and he forgot to look at things in historical and macroscopic view. He should have asked himself, are they doing something to get out from this miserable life? For me, I would answer no. They are just keeping their lives in this cycle of poverty that they have created.

To truly move the country to certain level of development, or to remove poverty from society, the lower classes of the Filipino should start changing their views and should start working their asses to provide their family with comfortable life and to provide their children with fair level of education so that they get out from the cycle of impoverished lifestyle. They need to stop blaming the President for their plight. They should have asked their selves, is it really the government that brings misery to our lives or is it ourselves?

The problem with the Filipino lower masses does not come from the set-up and execution of our governance. They put themselves in that level. It is their individual effort to alleviate the status of their life that will end all of their woes. Development and good society won’t come from the government but will come from the individual effort geared towards concerted agenda of eliminating poverty. Everyone must do their share.

We ended our discussion to another topic that I will be discussing soon. It has something to do from the leap of the Philippine culture from Agricultural to Industrial, missing one important revolution that I believe we need to undergo. For now, I have to end my thoughts here.

Anyway, when we arrived at Gen’s house we dressed up immediately because she was already furious. We were quite late for her wedding.

Here are some photos:

The Newlyweds and the Secondary Sponsors

anton, jb (jabo), maida, pow and me

Pow, JayR and Me

Me and JC (Iris' son)

Nelson and Me

A dance with Iris' Mom

Technorati Tags: wedding, philippine governance, filipino people, poverty, homeokinetics, economics

Economic Stoichiometry of “Laswa”

A good friend wrote about the plight of jute (saluyot) leaves in the economic arena of my hometown. Jute leaves, with other vegetables such as eggplant and squash, added with krill or dried small shrimps (dried alamang) are usually cooked in one soup-vegetable dish that we call “laswa”. It is indeed nutrient rich and delicious soup.

Surprisingly, jute plants, in other countries are used to manufacture Jute fibers. In fact, it is one of the strongest natural fabric and the second most important vegetable fiber after cotton for various economic purposes. All my life, I thought Jute is just an ingredient needed for my favorite vegetable soup. Nobody told me and I haven’t known any of its great economic potential in the world market, not until a good friend informed me about this.

Imagine that! Then how come Jute remains a vegetable soup ingredient in my hometown? Did anyone in my hometown explore its economic potential? Jute is being grown there like grass and nobody will care about it until someone will crave to have a good bowl of “laswa.”

For weeks, I have been thinking about the economic equation of my hometown Iloilo. There is big error in its economic stoichiometry. Major economic components are not amplified to balance both sides of the equation. The economic activities are not maximized because of the unbalanced economic factors.

Synthesizing the current economic scenario of my hometown, here are some of the major factors that I could identify, lagging its economic returns maximization rate.

1. Conventional political approach.
2. Inflexibility of economic platform.
3. Insensitivity to the global economic movements.
4. Non-synchronicity of economic agenda
5. Lack of collaborative efforts

This is not all about the “Jute”leaves. This is about the actual local economic set-up. Iloilo had witnessed days of her economic height. Unfortunately, she wasn’t’ able to sustain this height and had been in dormancy for almost half a decade. Right now, Iloilo is beginning to pick up her pace, but I find the current economic platforms unsustainable.

For now, I will limit my thoughts here. I will further expound the enumerated factors above in my next series of economic contemplations. They are pretty vague and it is necessary for me to explain further why they are the hindrances in local economic movement, specifically in my hometown.

I am hoping that Jute plants won’t be limited only on the table of Ilonggo families in the future. (Hala antok na ako)

Technorati Tags: iloilo, jute, laswa, local economy, saluyot