Income Inequality in a Dynamic Network

Ram, Sumit Kumar (2017) Income Inequality in a Dynamic Network. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

PDF (MS dissertation of Sumit Kumar Ram (12MS039)) SKR_12MS039.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (1MB)

Abstract

The thesis consists of two parts. In the first part, a simple agent based model is proposed. The agents are playing a variant of trust game. These agents interact within a random regular network with other agents to form a collective decision. This model is employed to investigate the moderation of wealth inequality due to collective decision making. In the second part, a more detailed study has been carried out on the effect of economic inequality due to collective decision making. In the model, agents play a cooperation game within a dynamic network with different levels of initial economic inequality. The effect of wealth visibility is explored and it is found that the wealth inequality is facilitated when the information about the connected neighbors is accessible. The visibility of wealth has an adverse effect on overall cooperation, inter-connectedness and wealth growth.

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