[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wzbmdn/spii2015502.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Emergence of networks and market institutions in a large virtual economy

Author

Listed:
  • Kephart, Curtis
  • Friedman, Daniel
  • Baumer, Matt
Abstract
A complete set of transactions, more than 40 million within a 1.8 year span, allows us to track the evolution of the trader network and the goods network in an on-line trading community. The computer platform was designed to make barter exchange as attractive as possible; money was not part of the design and all players were created equal. Yet, within weeks, several specific goods began to emerge as media of exchange, and not long after that various sorts of specialized traders began to appear. We track their progress using network-theoretic metrics such as node strength, assortativity, betweenness and closeness. By the end of our sample, virtually all trade was money-mediated and market makers played a major role.

Suggested Citation

  • Kephart, Curtis & Friedman, Daniel & Baumer, Matt, 2015. "Emergence of networks and market institutions in a large virtual economy," Discussion Papers, Research Professorship Market Design: Theory and Pragmatics SP II 2015-502, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbmdn:spii2015502
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/123502/1/841198322.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:cup:cbooks:9780511761942 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Kirman, Alan P. & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2001. "Evolving market structure: An ACE model of price dispersion and loyalty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(3-4), pages 459-502, March.
    3. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1989. "On Money as a Medium of Exchange," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 927-954, August.
    4. Bech, Morten L. & Atalay, Enghin, 2010. "The topology of the federal funds market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(22), pages 5223-5246.
    5. Baumer, Matt & Kephart, Curtis, 2015. "Aggregate Dynamics in a Large Virtual Economy: Prices and Real Activity in Team Fortress 2," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt9vm4h78s, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    6. Fredrik Liljeros & Christofer R. Edling & Luís A. Nunes Amaral & H. Eugene Stanley & Yvonne Åberg, 2001. "The web of human sexual contacts," Nature, Nature, vol. 411(6840), pages 907-908, June.
    7. Alan Kirman, 1997. "The economy as an evolving network," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 339-353.
    8. Leung, C.C. & Chau, H.F., 2007. "Weighted assortative and disassortative networks model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 378(2), pages 591-602.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arun G. Chandrasekhar & Robert Townsend & Juan Pablo Xandri, 2018. "Financial Centrality and Liquidity Provision," NBER Working Papers 24406, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Tesfatsion, Leigh, 2001. "Introduction to the special issue on agent-based computational economics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(3-4), pages 281-293, March.
    3. Giorgio Fagiolo & Marco Valente, 2005. "Minority Games, Local Interactions, and Endogenous Networks," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 41-57, February.
    4. León, C., 2015. "Financial stability from a network perspective," Other publications TiSEM bb2e4e44-e842-45c6-a946-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Franck Galtier & François Bousquet & Martine Antona & Pierre Bommel, 2012. "Markets as communication systems," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 161-201, January.
    6. Yang, J.-H. Steffi, 2009. "Social network influence and market instability," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3-4), pages 257-276, March.
    7. Evstigneev, Igor & Taksar, Michael, 2009. "Dynamic interaction models of economic equilibrium," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 166-182, January.
    8. Anthonisen, Niels, 2013. "On the long-run relationship between inflation and output in a spatial overlapping generations model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 2500-2524.
    9. León, Carlos & Berndsen, Ron J., 2014. "Rethinking financial stability: Challenges arising from financial networks’ modular scale-free architecture," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 241-256.
    10. Karl Finger & Daniel Fricke & Thomas Lux, 2013. "Network analysis of the e-MID overnight money market: the informational value of different aggregation levels for intrinsic dynamic processes," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 187-211, June.
    11. Arun Chandrasekhar & Robert Townsend & Juan Pablo Pablo Xandri, 2019. "Financial Centrality and the Value of Key Players," Working Papers 2019-26, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    12. Karolina Safarzyńska & Jeroen Bergh, 2010. "Evolutionary models in economics: a survey of methods and building blocks," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 329-373, June.
    13. Sanjeev Goyal, 2015. "Networks in Economics: A Perspective on the Literature," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1548, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    14. Denis Phan, 2004. "From Agent-Based Computational Economics towards Cognitive Economics," Post-Print halshs-03916500, HAL.
    15. Denis Phan & Stephane Pajot & Jean-Pierre Nadal, 2003. "The Monopolist's Market with Discrete Choices and Network Externality Revisited: Small-Worlds, Phase Transition and Avalanches in an ACE Framework," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 150, Society for Computational Economics.
    16. Berentsen, Aleksander & Huber, Samuel & Marchesiani, Alessandro, 2016. "The societal benefit of a financial transaction tax," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 303-323.
    17. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:5:y:2008:i:7:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Ehrentreich, Norman, 2006. "Technical trading in the Santa Fe Institute Artificial Stock Market revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 599-616, December.
    19. Kevin D. Hoover, 2016. "The Crisis in Economic Theory: A Review Essay," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1350-1361, December.
    20. Aldasoro, Iñaki & Delli Gatti, Domenico & Faia, Ester, 2017. "Bank networks: Contagion, systemic risk and prudential policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 164-188.
    21. Menzio, Guido & Shi, Shouyong & Sun, Hongfei, 2013. "A monetary theory with non-degenerate distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2266-2312.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Multiple Money as Medium of Exchange; Market Makers; Virtual Economy; Market Efficiency; Network Analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • C45 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Neural Networks and Related Topics
    • D49 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Other
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbmdn:spii2015502. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wzbbbde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.