HOW CAN STATISTICAL MECHANICS CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIAL SCIENCE?
This paper describes a model of interdependent decision making which has been developed to understand group differences in behaviors such as nonmarital fertility, school attendance, and drug use. These behaviors have in common a plausible dependence on peer group and related influences. The mathematical structure of the model is an example of the sorts of structures routinely studied in statistical mechanics. This suggest that the statistical mechanics literature may be able to yield a number of useful tools for the study of socioeconomic phenomena. Download WP#9913 in pdf.
