arXiv subjects

Marcel Ausloos

Publications and source records attributed to Marcel Ausloos.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Hint of a Universal Law for the Financial Gains of Competitive Sport Teams. The case of Tour de France cycle race

This short note is intended as a "Letter to the Editor" Perspective in order that it serves as a contribution, in view of reaching the physics community caring about rare events and scaling laws and unexpected findings, on a domain of wide interest: sport and money. It is apparent from the data reported and discussed below that the scarcity of such data does not allow to recommend a complex elaboration of an agent based model, - at this time. In some sense, this also means that much data on sport activities is not necessarily given in terms of physics prone materials, but it could be, and would then attract much attention. Nevertheless the findings tie the data to well known scaling laws and physics processes. It is found that a simple scaling law describes the gains of teams in recent bicycle races, like the Tour de France. An analogous case, ranking teams in Formula 1 races, is shown in an Appendix

q-fin.GN↗

arXiv2017

Fractional Dynamics of Network Growth Constrained by aging Node Interactions

In many social complex systems, in which agents are linked by non-linear interactions, the history of events strongly influences the whole network dynamics. However, a class of "commonly accepted beliefs" seems rarely studied. In this paper, we examine how the growth process of a (social) network is influenced by past circumstances. In order to tackle this cause, we simply modify the well known preferential attachment mechanism by imposing a time dependent kernel function in the network evolution equation. This approach leads to a fractional order Barabasi-Albert (BA) differential equation, generalizing the BA model. Our results show that, with passing time, an aging process is observed for the network dynamics. The aging process leads to a decay for the node degree values, thereby creating an opposing process to the preferential attachment mechanism. On one hand, based on the preferential attachment mechanism, nodes with a high degree are more likely to absorb links; but, on the other hand, a node's age has a reduced chance for new connections. This competitive scenario allows an increased chance for younger members to become a hub. Simulations of such a network growth with aging constraint confirm the results found from solving the fractional BA equation. We also report, as an exemplary application, an investigation of the collaboration network between Hollywood movie actors. It is undubiously shown that a decay in the dynamics of their collaboration rate is found, - even including a sex difference. Such findings suggest a widely universal application of the so generalized BA model.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2017

Data science for assessing possible tax income manipulation: The case of Italy

This paper explores a real-world fundamental theme under a data science perspective. It specifically discusses whether fraud or manipulation can be observed in and from municipality income tax size distributions, through their aggregation from citizen fiscal reports. The study case pertains to official data obtained from the Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance over the period 2007-2011. All Italian (20) regions are considered. The considered data science approach concretizes in the adoption of the Benford first digit law as quantitative tool. Marked disparities are found, - for several regions, leading to unexpected "conclusions". The most eye browsing regions are not the expected ones according to classical imagination about Italy financial shadow matters.

q-fin.ST↗

arXiv2017

On the electronic viscosity of a Dirac fluid in deformed graphene

We discuss the properties of the electronic viscosity of a Dirac fluid in deformed graphene by introducing a strain and velocity gradient as equivalent to a pseudo-magnetic and pseudo-electric field respectively into the Dirac equation. It is thereby analytically established that the dynamic shear viscosity coefficient substantially decreases with the applied strain.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Impact of the Global Crisis on SME Internal vs. External Financing in China

Changes in the capital structure before and after the global financial crisis for SMEs are studied, emphasizing their financing problems, distinguishing between internal financing and external financing determinants. The empirical research bears upon 158 small and medium-sized firms listed on Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchanges in China over the period of 2004-2014. A regression analysis, along the lines of the Trade-Off Theory, shows that the leverage decreases with profitability, non-debt tax shields and the liquidity, and increases with firm size and tangibility. A positive relationship is found between firm growth and debt ratio, though not highly significantly. It is shown that the SMEs with high growth rates are those which will more easily obtain external financing after a financial crisis. It is recognized that the China government should reconsider SMEs taxation laws.

q-fin.GN↗

arXiv2017

On Dynamical Systems Theory in Quantitative Psychology and Cognition Science: A Fair Discrimination Between Deterministic and Statistical Counterparts Is Required

The present communication addresses a set of observations, obeying both deterministic as well as statistical formal requirements, and serving to operate within the framework of the dynamical systems theory, with a certain emphasis placed on initial data. It is argued that statistical approaches can manifest themselves non unequivocally, leading to certain virtual discrepancies in psychological and/or cognitive data analyses, termed sometimes in literature as, questionable research practices. This communication points to the demand for a deep awareness of the data origins, which can indicate whether the exponential (Malthus type) or the algebraic (Pareto type) statistical distribution ought to be effectively considered in practical interpretation. This is also related to the question of how frequently patients behave in a specific way, and the significance of these behaviors in determining a patient's progression or regression, involving a certain memory effect. In this perspective, it is discussed how a sensitively applied hazardous or triggering factor can be helpful for well-controlled psychological strategic treatments, also those attributable to obsessive/compulsive disorders or even self-injurious behaviors, with their both criticality and complexity exploiting relations between a therapist and a patient.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2017

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Editor Behavior through Potentially Coercive Citations

How much is the h-index of an editor of a well ranked journal improved due to citations which occur after his or her appointment? Scientific recognition within academia is widely measured nowadays by the number of citations or h-index. Our dataset is based on a sample of four editors from a well ranked journal (impact factor - IF - greater than 2). The target group consists of two editors who seem to benefit by their position through an increased citation number (and subsequently h-index) within journal. The total amount of citations for the target group is bigger than 600. The control group is formed by another set of two editors from the same journal whose relations between their positions and their citation records remain neutral. The total amount of citations for the control group is more than 1200. The timespan for which pattern of citations has been studied is 1975-2015. Previous coercive citations for a journal benefit (increase its IF) has been signaled. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering work on coercive citations for personal (or editors) benefit. Editorial teams should be aware about this type of potentially unethical behavior and act accordingly.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2017

Benford's law: a 'sleeping beauty' sleeping in the dirty pages of logarithmic tables

Benford's law is an empirical observation, first reported by Simon Newcomb in 1881 and then independently by Frank Benford in 1938: the first significant digits of numbers in large data are often distributed according to a logarithmically decreasing function. Being contrary to intuition, the law was forgotten as a mere curious observation. However, in the last two decades, relevant literature has grown exponentially, - an evolution typical of "Sleeping Beauties" (SBs) publications that go unnoticed (sleep) for a long time and then suddenly become center of attention (are awakened). Thus, in the present study, we show that Newcomb (1881) and Benford (1938) papers are clearly SBs. The former was in deep sleep for 110 years whereas the latter was in deep sleep for a comparatively lesser period of 31 years up to 1968, and in a state of less deep sleep for another 27 years up to 1995. Both SBs were awakened in the year 1995 by Hill (1995a). In so doing, we show that the waking prince (Hill, 1995a) is more often quoted than the SB whom he kissed, - in this Benford's law case, wondering whether this is a general effect, - to be usefully studied.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2016

Long-range properties and data validity for hydrogeological time series: the case of the Paglia river

This paper explores a large collection of about 377,000 observations, spanning more than 20 years with a frequency of 30 minutes, of the streamflow of the Paglia river, in central Italy. We analyze the long-term persistence properties of the series by computing the Hurst exponent, not only in its original form but also under an evolutionary point of view by analyzing the Hurst exponents over a rolling windows basis. The methodological tool adopted for the persistence is the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which is classically known as suitable for our purpose. As an ancillary exploration, we implement a control on the data validity by assessing if the data exhibit the regularity stated by Benford's law. Results are interesting under different viewpoints. First, we show that the Paglia river streamflow exhibits periodicities which broadly suggest the existence of some common behaviour with El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillations: this specifically points to a (not necessarily direct) effect of these oceanic phenomena on the hydrogeological equilibria of very far geographical zones: however, such an hypothesis needs further analyses to be validated. Second, the series of streamflows shows an antipersistent behaviour. Third, data are not consistent with Benford's law: this suggests that the measurement criteria should be opportunely revised. Fourth, the streamflow distribution is well approximated by a discrete generalized Beta distribution: this is well in accordance with the measured streamflows being the outcome of a complex system.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2016

Day of the week effect in paper submission/acceptance/rejection to/in/by peer review journals. II. An ARCH econometric-like modeling

This paper aims at providing a statistical model for the preferred behavior of authors submitting a paper to a scientific journal. The electronic submission of (about 600) papers to the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society has been recorded for every day from Jan. 01, 2013 till Dec. 31, 2014, together with the acceptance or rejection paper fate. Seasonal effects and editor roles (through desk rejection and subfield editors) are examined. An ARCH-like econometric model is derived stressing the main determinants of the favorite day-of-week process.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2016

A universal rank-size law

A mere hyperbolic law, like the Zipf's law power function, is often inadequate to describe rank-size relationships. An alternative theoretical distribution is proposed based on theoretical physics arguments starting from the Yule-Simon distribution. A modeling is proposed leading to a universal form. A theoretical suggestion for the "best (or optimal) distribution", is provided through an entropy argument. The ranking of areas through the number of cities in various countries and some sport competition ranking serves for the present illustrations.

physics.data-an↗

arXiv2016

Effect of memory in non-Markovian Boolean networks

One successful model of interacting biological systems is the Boolean network. The dynamics of a Boolean network, controlled with Boolean functions, is usually considered to be a Markovian (memory-less) process. However, both self organizing features of biological phenomena and their intelligent nature should raise some doubt about ignoring the history of their time evolution. Here, we extend the Boolean network Markovian approach: we involve the effect of memory on the dynamics. This can be explored by modifying Boolean functions into non-Markovian functions, for example, by investigating the usual non-Markovian threshold function, - one of the most applied Boolean functions. By applying the non-Markovian threshold function on the dynamical process of a cell cycle network, we discover a power law memory with a more robust dynamics than the Markovian dynamics.

q-bio.MN↗

arXiv2016

On the "usual" misunderstandings between econophysics and finance: some clarifications on modelling approaches and efficient market hypothesis

In line with the recent research and debates about econophysics and financial economics, this article discusses on usual misunderstandings between the two disciplines in terms of modelling and basic hypotheses. In the literature devoted to econophysics, the methodology used by financial economists is frequently considered as a top-down approach (starting from a priori "first principles") while econophysicists rather present themselves as scholars working with a (empirical data prone) bottom-up approach. Although this dualist perspective is very common in the econophysics literature, this paper claims that the distinction is very confusing and does not permit to reveal the essence of the differences between finance and econophysics. The distinction between these two fields is mainly investigated here through the lens of the Efficient Market Hypothesis in order to show that, in substance, econophysics and financial economics tend to have a similar approach implying that the misunderstanding between these two fields at the modelling level can therefore be overstepped.

q-fin.GN↗

arXiv2016

Day of the week effect in paper submission/acceptance/rejection to/in/by peer review journals

This paper aims at providing an introduction to the behavior of authors submitting a paper to a scientific journal. Dates of electronic submission of papers to the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society have been recorded from the 1st January 2013 till the 31st December 2014, thus over 2 years. There is no Monday or Friday effect like in financial markets, but rather a Tuesday-Wednesday effect occurs: papers are more often submitted on Wednesday; however, the relative number of going to be accepted papers is larger if these are submitted on Tuesday. On the other hand, weekend days (Saturday and Sunday) are not the best days to finalize and submit manuscripts. An interpretation based on the type of submitted work ("experimental chemistry") and on the influence of (senior) coauthors is presented. A thermodynamic connection is proposed within an entropy context. A (new) entropic distance is defined in order to measure the "opaqueness" = disorder) of the submission process.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2016

Regularities and Discrepancies of Credit Default Swaps: a Data Science approach through Benford's Law

In this paper, we search whether the Benford's law is applicable to monitor daily changes in sovereign Credit Default Swaps (CDS) quotes, which are acknowledged to be complex systems of economic content. This test is of paramount importance since the CDS of a country proxy its health and probability to default, being associated to an insurance against the event of its default. We fit the Benford's law to the daily changes in sovereign CDS spreads for 13 European countries, - both inside and outside the European Union and European Monetary Union. Two different tenors for the sovereign CDS contracts are considered: 5 yrs and 10 yrs, - the former being the reference and most liquid one. The time period under investigation is 2008-2015 which includes the period of distress caused by the European sovereign debt crisis. Moreover, (i) an analysis over relevant sub-periods is carried out, (ii) several insights are provided also by implementing the tracking of the Benford's law over moving windows. The main test for checking the conformance to Benford's law is - as usual - the $χ^{2}$ test, whose values are presented and discussed for all cases. The analysis is further completed by elaborations based on Chebyshev's distance and Kullback and Leibler's divergence. The results highlight differences by countries and tenors. In particular, these results suggest that liquidity seems to be associated to higher levels of distortion. Greece - representing a peculiar case - shows a very different path with respect to the other European countries.

q-fin.ST↗

arXiv2016

Studies on Regional Wealth Inequalities: the case of Italy

The paper contains a short review of techniques examining regional wealth inequalities based on recently published research work but is also presenting unpublished features. The data pertains to Italy (IT), over the period 2007-2011: the number of cities in regions, the number of inhabitants in cities and in regions, as well as the aggregated tax income of the cities and of regions. Frequency-size plots and cumulative distribution function plots, scatter plots and rank-size plots are displayed. The rank-size rule of a few cases is discussed. Yearly data of the aggregated tax income is transformed into a few indicators: the Gini, Theil, and Herfindahl-Hirschman indices. Numerical results confirm that IT is divided into very different regional realities. One region is selected for a short discussion: Molise. A note on the "first digit Benford law" for testing data validity is presented.

q-fin.CP↗

arXiv2016

How visas shape and make visible the geopolitical architecture of the planet

The aim of the present study is to provide a picture for geopolitical globalization: the role of all world countries together with their contribution towards globalization is highlighted. In the context of the present study, every country owes its efficiency and therefore its contribution towards structuring the world by the position it holds in a complex global network. The location in which a country is positioned on the network is shown to provide a measure of its "contribution" and "importance". As a matter of fact, the visa status conditions between countries reflect their contribution towards geopolitical globalization. Based on the visa status of all countries, community detection reveals the existence of 4+1 main communities. The community constituted by the developed countries has the highest clustering coefficient equal to 0.9. In contrast, the community constituted by the old eastern European blocks, the middle eastern countries, and the old Soviet Union has the lowest clustering coefficient approximately equal to 0.65. PR China is the exceptional case. Thus, the picture of the globe issued in this study contributes towards understanding "how the world works".

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2016

Modelling and Measuring the Irrational behaviour of Agents in Financial Markets: Discovering the Psychological Soliton

Following a Geometrical Brownian Motion extension into an Irrational Fractional Brownian Motion model, we re-examine agent behaviour reacting to time dependent news on the log-returns thereby modifying a financial market evolution. We specifically discuss the role of financial news or economic information positive or negative feedback of such irrational (or contrarian) agents upon the price evolution. We observe a kink-like effect reminiscent of soliton behaviour, suggesting how analysts' forecasts errors induce stock prices to adjust accordingly, thereby proposing a measure of the irrational force in a market.

q-fin.TR↗