Dresden 2014 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 17: Economic Models
SOE 17.2: Talk
Thursday, April 3, 2014, 09:45–10:00, GÖR 226
Behavioral and network origins of wealth inequality: insights from a virtual world — •Benedikt Fuchs1 and Stefan Thurner1,2,3 — 1Section for Science of Complex Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 23, A-1090, Austria — 2Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA — 3International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Almost universally, wealth is not distributed evenly within societies or economies. Most studies of wealth distributions suffer from low resolution of the data, and connections to the behavioral origins of wealth inequalities could so far not be established. Here we present wealth data of an entire economy of the players in a massive multiplayer online game. This unique dataset contains every player's wealth at any instant, as well as all of her actions. When comparing the wealth distribution with data from real world economies, we find striking similarities. Comparing measures of inequality such as the Gini index and the exponent of the power law tail of the wealth distribution, we find that wealth is distributed slightly more equally in the game than in western countries. Considering individual behavioral factors, we observe that the wealthiest players are monopolists of certain goods. We find that wealthy players generally are active members in social groups and entertain many mutual friendships; they have few personal enemies, but show pronounced animosity towards public enemies.