Acta Physica Polonica B

Vol. 36, No. 9, September 2005, page 2709


Wealth Condensation and ``Corruption'' in a Toy Model

D. Johnston, Z. Burda, J. Jurkiewicz, M. Kaminski, M.A. Nowak, G. Papp, I. Zahed

We discuss the wealth condensation mechanism in a simple toy economy in which individual agent's wealths are distributed according to a Pareto power law and the overall wealth is fixed. The observed behaviour is the manifestation of a transition which occurs in Zero Range Processes (ZRPs) or ``balls in boxes'' models. An amusing feature of the transition in this context is that the condensation can be induced by  increasing  the exponent in the power law, which one might have naively assumed penalised greater wealths more.

PACS numbers: 02.50.--r, 05.70.Fh



 
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