In existographies, Victor Yakovenko (1961-) (CR:35) is a Russian-born American physicist noted, in econophysics, for his 1998 to present work in promoting the subject of econophysics in America.
Overview
In 2000, Yakovenko and graduate student Romanian-born American physicist Adrian Dragulescu, argued that: [1]
“In a closed economic system, money is conserved. Thus, by analogy with energy, the equilibrium probability distribution of money must follow the exponential Boltzmann-Gibbs law characterized by an effective temperature equal to the average amount of money per economic agent.”
The following is the gist of their Boltzmann distribution money model:
Since about 2003, Yakovenko has been running an econophysics research group at the physics department of the University of Maryland, where he lists Barkley Rosser as one of his collaborators. [3]
In 2006, Yakovenko, expanding on the above “Boltzmann distribution money theory”, was the opening speaker at the American Physical Society focus session on econophysics. [2]
Information theory
In 2009, Yakovenko was a co-author of the monograph Classical Econophysics, the abstract of which is: [4]
“This book sets out to address some basic questions drawing from classical political economy and information theory and using an econophysics methodology: What is information? Why is it valuable? What is the relationship between money and information?”
No doubt this is a ride on the Shannon bandwagon. [5]
Education
Yakovenko completed his undergraduate work and his MS (1984) at the Moscow Physical-Technical Institute, and his PhD in 1987 in theoretical physics at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. Since 1993, he has been a physics professor at the University of Maryland.
References
1. Dragulescu, Adrian A. and Yakovenko, Victor M. (2000). “Statistical Mechanics of Money,” European Physical Journal B 17, 723–729.
2. Yakovenko, Victor. (2006). “Statistical Mechanics of Money, Income, and Wealth” (abs), American Physical Society, Focus Session: Econophysics, Mar 13.
3. Econophysics research (Victor Yakovenko’s group) – physics department, University of Maryland.
4. Cottrell, Allin F., Cockshott, Paul, Michaelson, Gregory J. Wright, Ian P., and Yakovenko, Victory. (2009). Classical Econophysics (abs). Taylor & Francis.
5. Thims, Libb. (2012). “Thermodynamics ≠ Information Theory: Science’s Greatest Sokal Affair” (url), Journal of Human Thermodynamics, 8(1): 1-120, Dec 19.
Further reading
● Yakovenko, Victor M. and Rosser, J. Barkley. (2009). “Colloquium: Statistical Mechanics of Money, Wealth, and Income”, ArXiv, Dec 24.
● Yakovenko, Victor M. (2009). “Econophysics, Statistical Mechanics, An Approach to”, in: Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science (editors: R.A. Meyers) (abs). Springer.
Videos
● Yakovenko, Victor. (2013). “What Causes Inequality? An Econophysics Approach” (Ѻ), New Economic Thinking, Oct 25.
External links
● Victor M. Yakovenko (faculty) – University of Maryland.
● Econophysics (Yakovenko’s econophysics research group) – University of Maryland.
