Power law scaling for a system of interacting units with complex internal structure.

Amaral, LAN, Buldyrev, SV, Havlin, S, Salinger, MA, Stanley, HE.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1385-1388 (1998)

Times cited: 126

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Abstract

We study the dynamics of a system composed of interacting units each with a complex internal structure comprising many subunits and treat the case in which each subunit grows in a multiplicative manner. We propose a model for such systems in which the interaction among the units is treated in a mean field approximation and the interaction among subunits is nonlinear. We test the model and find agreement between our predictions and empirical results based on a large economics database spanning 20 years.