scholarly journals How strategy environment and wealth shape altruistic behaviour: Cooperation rules affecting wealth distribution in dynamic networks

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spandan Pathak ◽  
Prateek Verma ◽  
Sumit K. Ram ◽  
Supratim Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Social Ties ◽  
Environmental Influence ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Dynamic Networks ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Local Strategy ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Decision Making Model

AbstractSocieties rely on individual contributions to sustain public goods that benefit the entire community. Several mechanisms, that specify how individuals change their decisions based on past experiences, have been proposed to explain how altruists are not outcompeted by selfish counterparts. A key aspect of such strategy updates involves a comparison of an individual’s latest payoff with that of a random neighbour. In reality, both the economic and social milieu often shapes cooperative behaviour. We propose a new decision heuristic, where the propensity of an individual to cooperate depends on the local strategy environment in which she is embedded as well as her wealth relative to that of her neighbours. Our decision-making model allows cooperation to be sustained and also explains the results of recent experiments on social dilemmas in dynamic networks. Final cooperation levels depend only on the extent to which the strategy environment influences altruistic behaviour but are largely unaffected by network restructuring. However, the extent of wealth inequality in the community is affected by a subtle interplay between the environmental influence on a person’s decision to contribute and the likelihood of reshaping social ties, with wealth-inequality levels rising with increasing likelihood of network restructuring in some situations.

scholarly journals How strategy environment and wealth shape altruistic behaviour: cooperation rules affecting wealth distribution in dynamic networks

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1941) ◽  
pp. 20202250
Author(s):  
Spandan Pathak ◽  
Prateek Verma ◽  
Sumit K. Ram ◽  
Supratim Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Social Ties ◽  
Environmental Influence ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Dynamic Networks ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Local Strategy ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Decision Making Model

Societies rely on individual contributions to sustain public goods that benefit the entire community. Several mechanisms, that specify how individuals change their decisions based on past experiences, have been proposed to explain how altruists are not outcompeted by selfish counterparts. A key aspect of such strategy updates involves a comparison of an individual's latest payoff with that of a random neighbour. In reality, both the economic and social milieu often shapes cooperative behaviour. We propose a new decision heuristic, where the propensity of an individual to cooperate depends on the local strategy environment in which she is embedded as well as her wealth relative to that of her neighbours. Our decision-making model allows cooperation to be sustained and also explains the results of recent experiments on social dilemmas in dynamic networks. Final cooperation levels depend only on the extent to which the strategy environment influences altruistic behaviour but are largely unaffected by network restructuring. However, the extent of wealth inequality in the community is affected by a subtle interplay between the environmental influence on a person's decision to contribute and the likelihood of reshaping social ties, with wealth-inequality levels rising with increasing likelihood of network restructuring in some situations.

scholarly journals Wealth Disparities Before and After the Great Recession

2013 ◽  
Vol 650 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian T. Pfeffer ◽  
Sheldon Danziger ◽  
Robert F. Schoeni
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Longitudinal Analyses ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Socioeconomic Groups ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Substantial Rise ◽  
American Families

The collapse of the labor, housing, and stock markets beginning in 2007 created unprecedented challenges for American families. This study examines disparities in wealth holdings leading up to the Great Recession and during the first years of the recovery. All socioeconomic groups experienced declines in wealth following the recession, with higher wealth families experiencing larger absolute declines. In percentage terms, however, the declines were greater for less advantaged groups as measured by minority status, education, and prerecession income and wealth, leading to a substantial rise in wealth inequality in just a few years. Despite large changes in wealth, longitudinal analyses demonstrate little change in mobility in the ranking of particular families in the wealth distribution. Between 2007 and 2011, one-fourth of American families lost at least 75 percent of their wealth, and more than half of all families lost at least 25 percent of their wealth. Multivariate longitudinal analyses document that these large relative losses were disproportionally concentrated among lower-income, less educated, and minority households.

scholarly journals Dynamic network partnerships and social contagion drive cooperation

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1893) ◽  
pp. 20181973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roslyn Dakin ◽  
T. Brandt Ryder
Keyword(s):  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Dynamic Networks ◽  
Dynamic Network ◽  
Social Contagion ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Data Logging ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
Multiple Membership

Both reciprocity and positive assortment (like with like) are predicted to promote the evolution of cooperation, yet how partners influence each other's behaviour within dynamic networks is not well understood. One way to test this question is to partition phenotypic variation into differences among individuals in the expression of cooperative behaviour (the ‘direct effect’), and plasticity within individuals in response to the social environment (the ‘indirect effect’). A positive correlation between these two sources of variation, such that more cooperative individuals elicit others to cooperate, is predicted to facilitate social contagion and selection on cooperative behaviour. Testing this hypothesis is challenging, however, because it requires repeated measures of behaviour across a dynamic social landscape. Here, we use an automated data-logging system to quantify the behaviour of 179 wire-tailed manakins, birds that form cooperative male–male coalitions, and we use multiple-membership models to test the hypothesis that dynamic network partnerships shape within-individual variation in cooperative behaviour. Our results show strong positive correlations between a bird's own sociality and his estimated effect on his partners, consistent with the hypothesis that cooperation begets cooperation. These findings support the hypothesis that social contagion can facilitate selection for cooperative behaviour within social networks.

scholarly journals Predicting Mobile Advertising Response Using Consumer Colocation Networks

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pal Zubcsek ◽  
Zsolt Katona ◽  
Miklos Sarvary
Keyword(s):  
Social Ties ◽  
Dynamic Networks ◽  
Product Category ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Mobile Advertising ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Advertising Industry ◽  
Product Categories ◽  
Mobile Coupons ◽  
Practical Implications

Building on results from economics and consumer behavior, the authors theorize that consumers’ movement patterns are informative of their product preferences, and this study proposes that marketers monetize this information using dynamic networks that capture colocation events (when consumers appear at the same place at approximately the same time). To support this theory, the authors study mobile advertising response in a panel of 217 subscribers. The data set spans three months during which participants were sent mobile coupons from retailers in various product categories through a smartphone application. The data contain coupon conversions, demographic and psychographic information, and information on the hourly GPS location of participants and on their social ties in the form of referrals. The authors find a significant positive relationship between colocated consumers’ response to coupons in the same product category. In addition, they show that incorporating consumers’ location information can increase the accuracy of predicting the most likely conversions by 19%. These findings have important practical implications for marketers engaging in the fast-growing location-based mobile advertising industry.

scholarly journals Some problems in Piketty: an internal critique

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Alan Tapper
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
National Income ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Income Ratio ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Distribution Trends

Thomas Piketty’s evidence on wealth distribution trends in Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows that – contra his own interpretation – there has been little rise in wealth inequality in Europe and America since the 1970s. This article relates that finding to the other principal trends in Piketty’s analysis: the capital/national income ratio trend, the capital-labor split of total incomes and the income inequality trend. Given that wealth inequality is not rising markedly, what can we deduce about the putative causes that might be operating upstream? Only the capital-labor split looks like a plausible explanation of the wealth inequality trend.

scholarly journals Some Major Causes of Current Economic Crises and Leadership Strategies

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asım Şen
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Shared Vision ◽  
Leadership Strategies ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
The People ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
Sustainable Economic Growth

This paper argues that economic inequality is one of the major causes of the current economic crises and provides some appropriate leadership strategies for solving them. Inequality is defined as unequal opportunities for economical activities among the people of a nation and among the nations of the world. The major cause of most current economic crises is the income and wealth inequality which are generated mainly by the economic growth. Leaders in the past and currently could not utilize appropriate strategies to solve the inequality problems and consequently the economic crisis grew and reached the current levels. In order to solve the current economic crises it is necessary to eliminate the economic inequality problems and establish fair and sustainable economic growth. The leadership strategies play crucial role for this process. These strategies included in this paper are establishing the local and global shared vision for all; balancing the income and wealth distribution; providing the equal opportunities for education and employment; sharing the production and consumption; and maintaining the fair and sustainable globalization and economic growth.

Economic Growth, Wealth and Wealth Inequality in Asia before, during and after the Global Financial Crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 459-483
Author(s):  
Jenny Chesters
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

Abstract Although economic growth is regarded as an indicator of the success of an economy and, therefore, an indicator of rising living standards, there is no guarantee that living standards will improve for all members of society unless the benefits derived from economic growth are shared equally. If the wealth generated by economic growth accrues to those at the top of the wealth distribution, levels of inequality will increase. In this paper, I use publicly available data from the World Bank, Credit Suisse, and Forbes Magazine for 11 countries in East Asia/ South East Asia: Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, to examine whether increases in GDP/capita were accompanied by increases in wealth/adult and levels of wealth inequality between 2000 and 2016. In China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, wealth inequality increased substantially despite, or perhaps due to, the rapid expansion of their economies. In other words, it would appear that the rising tide lifted some boats but swamped others.

Inequality in the minimal group paradigm: How relative wealth and its justification influence ingroup bias

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Robert Connor ◽  
Daniel Stancato ◽  
Ugur Yildirim ◽  
Serena CHEN
Keyword(s):  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Minimal Group Paradigm ◽  
Financial Decision Making ◽  
Minimal Group ◽  
Financial Decision ◽  
Moderating Role

This article details a registered report for a well-powered (N = 1500) experiment examining the influence of wealth inequality between groups on ingroup bias, as well as the potential moderating role of justification for the wealth distribution. Using the Minimal Group Paradigm, in which participants are assigned to groups with anonymous others and asked to allocate resources to ingroup or outgroup members, we randomly assigned participants to a relatively disadvantaged or a relatively advantaged group. Group assignments were ostensibly based on chance (weak justification), performance on a financial decision-making task (strong justification), or an ambiguous combination of the two (ambiguous justification). As expected, we found evidence for an inequity aversion hypothesis, with disadvantaged participants displaying heightened ingroup bias compared to their advantaged counterparts. Interestingly, however, our predictions regarding the moderating role of justification were not supported, with disadvantaged participants displaying the highest ingroup bias when the inequality was ambiguously justified. We discuss implications of these results for understanding the causal factors underlying ingroup bias.

Wealth Inequality, Network Topology and Financial Instability

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hauner
Keyword(s):  
Financial Stability ◽  
Random Network ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Financial Assets ◽  
Financial Network ◽  
Random Shock ◽  
Income Shock ◽  
Network Simulations ◽  
Individual Asset

This paper asks if two, otherwise identical, economies were distinguished only by their distributions of wealth, are they equally stable in response to a random shock? A theoretical financial network model is proposed to understand the relationship between wealth inequality and financial crises. In a financial network, financial assets link individual asset and liability holders to form a web of economic connections. The total connectivity of an individual is described by their degree, and the overall distribution of connections in the network is imposed through a degree distribution--equivalent to the wealth distribution as incoming connections represent assets and outgoing connections liabilities. A network's topology varies with the level of wealth inequality and total wealth and together, simulations show, they determine network contagion in the event of a random negative income shock to some individual. Random network simulations, whereby each financial connection is randomly placed, reveal that increasing wealth inequality makes a wealthy network less stable--as measured by the share of individuals failing financially or the decline in financial asset values. These results suggest a unique architectural role for accumulated assets and their distribution in macro-financial stability.

scholarly journals Wealth distribution and collective knowledge: a Boltzmann approach

2014 ◽  
Vol 372 (2028) ◽  
pp. 20130396 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Pareschi ◽  
G. Toscani
Keyword(s):  
Kinetic Equation ◽  
Numerical Simulations ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Stat Phys ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Nonlinear Kinetic

We introduce and discuss a nonlinear kinetic equation of Boltzmann type that describes the influence of knowledge in the evolution of wealth in a system of agents that interact through the binary trades, an equation first introduced by Cordier et al. (2005 J. Stat. Phys. 120 , 253–277 ( doi:10.1007/S10955-005-5456-0 )). The trades, which include both saving propensity and the risks of the market, are here modified in the risk and saving parameters, which now are assumed to depend on the personal degree of knowledge. The numerical simulations show that the presence of knowledge has the potential to produce a class of wealthy agents and to account for a larger proportion of wealth inequality.

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