This study focuses on a well-known but yet elusive concept: (technological) lock-in. We summarize what is known about the nature of lock-in and offer a critical view on history- dependent processes based on recent contributions to the literature. We discuss if lock-ins are really inescapable,...

Do the rich always get richer by investing in a cryptocurrency for which new coins are issued according to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol? We answer this question in the negative: Without trading, the investor shares in the cryptocurrency are martingales that converge to a well-defined limiting...

In this paper we propose to use Polya urn processes to model the emergence of conformity in an environment where people interact with each other sequentially and indirectly, through a common physical facility. Examples include rewinding video tapes, erasing blackboards, and switching headlights,...

We propose a Bayesian nonparametric model to estimate rating migration matrices and default probabilities using the reinforced urn processes (RUP) introduced in Muliere et al. (2000). The estimated default probability becomes our prior information in a parametric model for the prediction of the...

A statistical physics study of punctuation effects on sentence lengths is presented for written texts: Alice in wonderland and Through a looking glass. The translation of the first text into esperanto is also considered as a test for the role of punctuation in defining a style, and for...

We propose a framework that specifies the process of economic development as an evolutionary branching process of product innovations. Each product innovation provides a growth opportunity for an existing firm or a new firm, and for an existing city or a new city. One can then obtain both firm...