DailyDirt: Economic Phenomena, Not Just Theories

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Dec 10th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

It's sometimes difficult to verify economic theories in the real world because it can be expensive to "test" really important policies. But as more and more people play increasingly realistic video games with active marketplaces, there may be ways to observe real economic phenomena in virtual economies. Here are just a few interesting observations on the topic of scarcity.

Using 60TB of data from 400,000 Everquest players over 4 years, we can verify some economic behaviors in the virtual world and test economic policy decisions. Maybe these researchers should test out a bunch of virtual "fiscal cliff" scenarios.... [url]
Retailers need to think a bit more about charitable programs that simply donate items to developing markets. Flooding a developing market with free goods isn't the optimal way to encourage market stability and create robust infrastructure. [url]
Prize-Linked Savings (PLS) is a banking scheme to encourage people to save more of their earnings by offering a lottery prize for savings deposits. So instead of lotteries always being a tax on the mathematically challenged, in this system, people can at least earn some interest by gambling. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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Filed Under: charity, economics, everquest, gambling, lotteries, prize linked savings, virtual marketplaces

4 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2012 @ 5:06pm

if only...
the federal govt could create a prize-linked-savings account for itself.
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mudlock (profile), 10 Dec 2012 @ 5:26pm

Re: if only...
I know this is meant to be a joke, and that I'm about to ruin it but:

A PLS works by taking a portion of the interest that would be paid to all savers, siphoning it off, and giving it all to one winner. But the government already has a way to siphon off everyone else's savings: create inflation. Which, arguably, it should be doing now anyway, so I guess you're right after all.
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Old Fool (profile), 11 Dec 2012 @ 3:26am

Premium bonds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond
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ChrisB (profile), 11 Dec 2012 @ 5:50am

Fiscal diet
Can we all agree to stop calling it the fiscal cliff and call it the fiscal "diet" instead? Sure, balancing your budget is tough, just like stopping drinking. But the cure for a hangover is not another beer.
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