Inequality and investment bubbles
Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 15:30
in Mathematics & Economics
"Money, it's a gas," says the sixties rock group Pink Floyd in their song "Money." Indeed, physics professor Victor Yakovenko is an expert in statistical physics and studies how the flow of money and the distribution of incomes in American society resemble the flow of energy between molecules in a gas. In his lectures to be delivered on April 19 at New York University and April 20 at the New School for Social Research, Yakovenko will bring his physics-of-incomes study up to date, including a report on the correlation between levels of income inequality and the appearance of financial downturns, such as the dot-com bubble of 2000 and the more recent housing bubble of 2008.