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Caltech

Linde Institute/Social and Information Sciences Laboratory Seminar

Friday, October 26, 2018
12:00pm to 1:00pm
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Baxter 125
Universal growth in production economies
Simina Brânzei, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Purdue University,

Abstract: "We study a simple variant of the von Neumann model of an expanding economy, in which multiple producers produce goods according to their production function. The players trade their goods at the market and then use the bundles acquired as inputs for the production in the next round. We show that a simple decentralized dynamic, where players update their bids proportionally to how useful the investments were in the past round, leads to growth of the economy in the long term (whenever growth is possible) but also creates unbounded inequality, i.e. very rich and very poor players emerge. We analyze several other phenomena, such as how the relation of a player with others influences its development and the Gini index of the system."

Joint with Ruta Mehta and Noam Nisan.

For more information, please contact Mary Martin by phone at 626-395-5884 or by email at [email protected].