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
About the Author: Banasri Basu is an Associate Professor at the Physics and Applied Mathematics Unit in the Indian Statistical Institute. The areas of her research interests include field theory of condensed matter systems, non-commutative quantum mechanics and entanglement in spin systems and she has in her credit about fifty scientific articles in international reputed journals, such as, Phys. Rev. B, J. Math. Phys., Eur. Phys. Lett., Phys. Lett. A. Recently, she is working in the empirical avenues in Econophysics.
Bikas K. Chakrabarti has professional interest in statistical physics, condensed matter physics, computational physics, and their application to social sciences. He is, at present, Sr. Professor of Physics, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata and Visiting Professor of Economics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He has authored/co-authored more than 150 papers in refereed journals, 5 reviews (Eur. Phys. J. B, Phys. Rep., 3 Rev. Mod. Phys.), 2 books (Oxford Univ. Press, Springer), edited/co-edited 11 books (Allied, 2 Elsevier, 7 Springer, Wiley-VCH) and initiated, along with colleagues, the conference series: STATPHYS-KOLKATA in 1992. He has received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, CSIR India (1997). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and also of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.
Satya R. Chakravarty is a Professor in the Economic Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Since 1984 he has been associated with various research and teaching positions with the Indian Statistical Institute. He has published scores of research papers in many internationally known journals, including, Journal of Economic Theory, Econometrica, Games and Economic Behavior, Economic Theory, International Economic Review, Social Choice and Welfare, Journal of Development Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Mathematical Social Sciences, Theory and Decision and Review of Income and Wealth . He has authored four books-Ethical Social Index Numbers, Issues in Industrial Economics and Inequality, Polarization and Poverty: Advances in distributional Analysis and Microeconomics. His research interests lie in social choice, measurement of inequality, poverty and well-being, game theory, industrial organization and microeconomics. He has acted as an external adviser to the World Bank and as an adviser to the National Council of Social Policy Evaluation, Mexico. Prof. Chakravarty was awarded the Mahalanobis Memorial Prize in 1994 by the Indian Econometric Society.
Kausik Gangopadhyay has received his Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Rochester. He is currently a Visiting Scientist at the Economic Research Unit in the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.
