How the rich get richer

Anita Mehta, A. S. Majumdar and J. M. Luck

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: In our model, $n$ traders interact with each other and with a central bank; they are taxed on the money they make, some of which is dissipated away by corruption. A generic feature of our model is that the richest trader always wins by 'consuming' all the others: another is the existence of a threshold wealth, below which all traders go bankrupt. The two-trader case is examined in detail,in the socialist and capitalist limits, which generalise easily to $n>2$. In its mean-field incarnation, our model exhibits a two-time-scale glassy dynamics, as well as an astonishing universality.When preference is given to local interactions in finite neighbourhoods,a novel feature emerges: instead of at most one overall winner in the system,finite numbers of winners emerge, each one the overlord of a particular region.The patterns formed by such winners (metastable states) are very much a consequence of initial conditions, so that the fate of the marketplace is ruled by its past history; hysteresis is thus also manifested.

Date: 2005-04
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in pp. 199-204 in 'Econophysics of Wealth Distributions', eds. A. Chatterjee et al., Springer-Verlag Italia 2005.

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:physics/0504121

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