We incorporate the behaviour of tax evasion into the standard two-dimensional Ising model and augment it by providing policy-makers with the opportunity to curb tax evasion via an appropriate enforcement mechanism. We find that tax evasion may vary greatly over time if no measures of control are...

Since its introduction in 2000, the Sznajd model has been assumed to simulate a democratic community with two parties. The main flaw in this model is that a Sznajd system freezes in the long term in a non-democratic state, which can be either a dictatorship or a stalemate configuration. Here we...

In this Note a social network model for opinion formation is proposed in which a person connected to q partners pays an attention 1/q to each partner. The mutual attention between two connected persons i and j is taken equal to the geometric mean 1/qiqj. Opinion is represented as usual by an...

The 2-spin Ising model in statistical mechanics and the 2×2 normal form game in game theory are compared. All configurations allowed by the second are recovered by the first when the only concern is about Nash equilibria. But it holds no longer when Pareto optimum considerations are introduced...

"Sociophysicists" provoke sociologists: new computer simulation models explain the mechanism which makes moderate individuals radicalise. It is sufficient to be a little self-confident and to keep contact with a few extremists to let extremists win a majority in society.

A contribution to the JASSS forum, in reaction to the paper in FASZ about our model of extremism

Monte Carlo simulations of a Sznajd model show that if a near-consensus is formed out of four initially equally widespread opinions, the one which at intermediate times is second in the number of adherents usually loses out against the third-placed opinion.

Moral Foundation Theory states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations. The use of functional imaging techniques has revealed a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential...

The combined effects of collective beliefs and individual inflexibility in the dynamics of a public debate are investigated using the Galam sequential probabilistic model of opinion dynamics. The study is focused on pair interactions for which the bias produced by collective beliefs is the...

The opinion dynamics studies how a final consensus emerges from a diversified initial configuration. The final result can be an artifact arising in the voting processes and overlook the features of the initial configuration, which leads to the unfair result. We explore the concept of fairness in...