An explanation for the universal 3.5 power-law observed in currency markets

We present a mathematical theory to explain a recent empirical finding in the Physics literature (Zhao et al., 2013) in which the distributions of waiting-times between discrete events were found to exhibit power-law tails with an apparent universal exponent: α∼3.5. This new theory provides the firs...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nicholas A. Johnson, Neil F. Johnson
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2016-01-01
Series:Results in Physics
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211379716000103
Description
Summary:We present a mathematical theory to explain a recent empirical finding in the Physics literature (Zhao et al., 2013) in which the distributions of waiting-times between discrete events were found to exhibit power-law tails with an apparent universal exponent: α∼3.5. This new theory provides the first ever qualitative and quantitative explanation of Zhao et al.’s surprising finding. It also provides a mechanistic description of the origin of the observed universality, assigning its cause to the emergence of dynamical feedback processes between evolving clusters of like-minded agents. Keywords: Complex systems, Econophysics, Collective, Power law
ISSN:2211-3797