Quantifying empirical economic fluctuations using the organizing principles of scale invariance and universality
XX, 3-11 (2002)
Abstract
This manuscript is a brief summary of a talk that was designed to address the question of whether two of the pillars of the field of phase transitions and critical phenomena-scale invariance and universality-can be useful in guiding research on interpreting empirical data on economic fluctuations. In particular, we shall develop a heuristic argument that serves to make more plausible the scaling and universality hypotheses.