Kinetic Description of Social Dynamics: From Consensus to Flocking

On the dynamics of social conflicts: welfare analysis looking for the Black Swan

Nicola Bellomo

Politecnico di Torino
[SLIDES]

This lecture deals with the modeling of social competition, including extreme conflicts [1], with the aim of investigating how individual behaviors [2] can lead to unpredictable events at a collective level known as Black Swans [4]. The modeling focuses on the interplay between the competition for the welfare distribution and the support/opposition to the government. It is shown how the interplay between these two dynamics can generate extreme events. The mathematical method used for pursuing such an analysis is the kinetic theory for active particles, where nonlinear interactions among subjects are modeled by stochastic games [3].

References [1] D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
[2] G. Ajmone Marsan, N. Bellomo, and M. Egidi. Towards a mathematical theory of complex socio-economical systems by functional subsystems representation. Kinet. Relat. Models, 1(2):249{278, 2008.
[3] N. Bellomo. Modeling complex living systems-A kinetic theory and stochastic game approach. Birkhauser-Springer, Boston, 2008.
[4] N. N. Taleb. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House, New York City, 2007. 1