STATISTICAL MECHANICS OF UTILITY AND EQUILIBRIUM:ANALOGIES BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND STATISTICAL PHYSICS

摘要

I deas from very disparate fields of knowledge oftencross fertilize, and the relationship between physicsand economics is no exception. Unfortunately, onsome occasions the analogy doesn't quite work out.Historically, neoclassical economics has borrowed manyideas from equilibrium thermodynamics, and by concen-trating on the key concepts of value, equilibrium, irre-versibility and dimensionality (the possibility of scarceresource substitution) I will argue that most of the result-ing analogies are misleading. Better analogies can befound in modern non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.