Over the last few posts I have been writing about variety of research conducted by a group based in University of Catania. I have covered some of their models illustrating various often counter-intuitive effects of randomness within social systems. This time let us talk about how a certain degree of randomness could benefit our political life [1].

Global economic media frequently report that U.S. productivity has been growing much faster than in Europe and other developed Western economies for many years. As an example, consider the recent publication in the Financial Times (FT). This is not journalistic exaggeration—such conclusions follow directly from the still widely used methodology of calculating real GDP and productivity, and from international comparisons based on that methodology.

The FT article clearly illustrates that Europe's economic lag behind the United States is treated as an objective reality at the highest levels of politics, and that policymakers have been searching for ways to "close this gap" for many years. We present these remarks because doubts about the magnitude of the United States’ economic advantage naturally arise from the study of international macroeconomics and economic growth theory.

Our most recent work [1] concerning the first passage time problem in the noisy voter model has been published in Chaos, Solitons and Fractals!

The mean first passage time is a prominent tool that quantifies fundamental switching behavior in systems ranging from natural to social sciences. In our earlier works the first-passage framework has found applications as a test for long-range memory [2]. While, the noisy voter model is a prominent model used to understand human opinion dynamics.

References

• R. Kazakevicius, A. Kononovicius. Mean first passage time of the symmetric noisy voter model with arbitrary initial and boundary conditions. Chaos, Solitons and Fractals 203: 117649 (2026). doi: 10.1016/j.chaos.2025.117649. arXiv:2512.02519 [cond-mat.stat-mech].
• R. Kazakevicius, A. Kononovicius, B. Kaulakys, V. Gontis. Understanding the nature of the long-range memory phenomenon in socio-economic systems. Entropy 23: 1125 (2021). doi: 10.3390/e23091125. arXiv:2108.02506 [physics.soc-ph].

Last time we have discussed a model, which shows that random promotions can be the best way to ensure efficiency of your organization. In the post we have mentioned that the research has won the Ig Nobel Management Prize in 2010. Did you know that the same group received the Ig Nobel Economics Prize in 2022? Furthermore, they received the prize for the model we have already covered on Physics of Risk. We encourage you to watch their acceptance speech below.

Last time I have shared a video about the Peter principle, which states that "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence." Actually, I have heard about this principle before in the scientific context. Prior to the video, I have heard about this principle from a group of Italian physicists, economists and mathematicians had working on a research project about benefits of random strategies [1]. On of their works was about the Peter principle. So, lets explore!