Power-law distributions in empirical data

This paper on Power-law distributions in empirical data by Cosma Shalizi et al will be required reading for me at some point in the future. They present an analysis and some new procedures of how to reliably detect whether a power law is in play in a particular empirical dataset as many of the simple and naive methods are flawed/biased.

Worrying trends in Econophysics

I enjoyed reading the analysis in the following paper Worrying Trends in Econophysics.

I am particularly intrigued by the role of production (actually reading their description of exchange vs production really cleared those concepts up in my head and made me feel like it should have been obvious from the start but I hadn't conceptualised them as such until now) and what they mentioned of Sraffa. Having just looked at his Wikipedia page I want to read more about the Cambridge Capital Controversy and the following post over at the Mises institute which gives an analysis of Sraffa's ideas from the Austrian point of view.

I found the link from this blog post by Cosma Shalizi on Why oh why can't we have better Econophysics but I haven't had time to read that yet.