作者
Edward Castronova, Dmitri Williams, Cuihua Shen, Rabindra Ratan, Li Xiong, Yun Huang, Brian Keegan
发表日期
2009/8
期刊
New Media & Society
卷号
11
期号
5
页码范围
685-707
出版商
SAGE Publications
简介
This article proposes an empirical test of whether aggregate economic behavior maps from the real to the virtual. Transaction data from a large commercial virtual world — the first such data set provided to outside researchers — is used to calculate metrics for production, consumption and money supply based on real-world definitions. Movements in these metrics over time were examined for consistency with common theories of macroeconomic change. The results indicated that virtual economic behavior follows real-world patterns. Moreover, a natural experiment occurred, in that a new version of the virtual world with the same rules came online during the study. The new world's macroeconomic aggregates quickly grew to be nearly exact replicas of those of the existing worlds, suggesting that `Code is Law': macroeconomic outcomes in a virtual world may be explained largely by design structure.
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