The monthly pattern of suicides has remained a puzzle ever since it was discovered in the second half of the 19th century. In this paper we intend to “explain” not the pattern itself but rather its changes across countries and in the course of time.

We describe, document and statistically test three mechanisms by which corporations can influence or even control stock prices: (i) Parent and holding companies wield control over other publicly traded companies. (ii) Through clever management of treasury stock based on buyback programs and...

It is a common belief that the behavior of shareholders depends upon the direction of price fluctuations: if prices increase they buy, if prices decrease they sell. That belief, however, is more based on ``common sense'' than on facts. In this paper we present evidence for a specific class of...

We describe and document three mechanisms by which corporations can influence or even control stock prices. (i) Parent and holding companies wield control over other publicly traded companies. (ii) Through clever management of treasury stock based on buyback programs and stock issuance, stock...

It is usually assumed that stock prices reflect a balance between large numbers of small individual sellers and buyers. However, over the past fifty years mutual funds and other institutional shareholders have assumed an ever increasing part of stock transactions: their assets, as a percentage...

One distinctive and pervasive aspect of social systems is the fact that they involve several kinds of agents. Thus, in order to draw parallels with physical systems one is led to consider binary (or multi-component) compounds. Recent views about the mixing of liquids in solutions gained from...

Speculation not only occurs in financial markets but also in numerous other markets, e.g. commodities, real estate, collectibles, and so on. Such speculative movements result in price peaks which share many common characteristics: same order of magnitude of duration with respect to amplitude,...

Transportation costs still play an important role in the economics of commodity markets. In this paper I present a theoretical framework aimed at describing spatial arbitrage under uncertainty; I analyze the effect of changing transport costs on different, yet related, variables: volume of...

This anniversary paper is an occasion to recall some of the events that shaped institutional econophysics. But in these thoughts about the evolution of econophysics in the last 15 years we also express some concerns. Our main worry concerns the relinquishment of the simplicity requirement. Ever...