Econophysics & Economics of Games, Social Choices and Quantitative Techniques

The combined efforts of the Physicists and the Economists in recent years in a- lyzing and modeling various dynamic phenomena in monetary and social systems have led to encouragingdevelopments,generally classi?ed under the title of Eco- physics. These developmentsshare a commonambitionwith the alreadyestablished ?eld of Quantitative Economics. This volume intends to offer the reader a glimpse of these two parallel initiatives by collecting review papers written by well-known experts in the respective research frontiers in one cover. This massive book presents a unique combination of research papers contributed almost equally by Physicists and Economists. Additional contributions from C- puter Scientists and Mathematicians are also included in this volume. It consists of two parts: The ?rst part concentrates on econophysics of games and social choices and is the proceedings of the Econophys-Kolkata IV workshop held at the Indian Statistical Institute and the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, both in Kolkata, d- ing March 9-13, 2009. The second part consists of contributionsto quantitative e- nomics by experts in connection with the Platinum Jubilee celebration of the Indian Statistical Institute. In this connectiona Forewordfor the volume, written by Sankar K. Pal, Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, is put forth. Both parts specialize mostly on frontier problems in games and social choices. The?rst partofthebookdealswith severalrecentdevelopmentsineconophysics. Game theory is integral to the formulation of modern economic analysis. Often games display a situation where the social optimal could not be reached as a - sult of non co-operation between different agents.