Abstract
Abstract. We argue that the economic inequality which is found in the OECD countries and in the salaries of the top executives’ in the Fortune 100 companies are merely an equilibrium statistical outcome, similar to that of the energy distribution among photons in a blackbody. When we treat the photons as people, the radiation modes asocial rank and the photons’ energy as wealth; we obtain for the energy distribution among photons: the Gini index, the ratio between rich and poor, the relative poverty, the part of the property held by the upper percentiles, the salaries of CEO's, very similar values to the corresponding numbers of the OECD counties and Fortune 100 companies.
Keywords. Economic inequality, Gini index, Relative poverty, Pareto law.
JEL. C62.
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