Economics Project

[bounty]

I'm currently working on my bachelor's degree in economics, and next year will be working on my masters degree. I'm going to try and gather various statistics from Pluto and see if I can try to look a little more closely into the economics that are taking place there. Anyone that has studied economics or has some basic knowledge on monetary and fiscal policy. Keynesian theory (Keynesian cross more specifically) Please private message me and i'd like to see what you can come up with. Would like to know what would be necissary to get the economy in more of an equilibrium and find out exactly where the inflation lies. Will be checking my box.

[Psyco Groupie]

this is no flame, the inflation has nothing todo with economics its just demand and/or everyone hording parts and none are will to trade and compelte chips

[whifix]

What server do you have a problem trading parts on? I have successfully completed a SF, Special Riggers Interface, Judge and Executioner in a little short of two weeks on Pluto thanks to trade.

[bounty]

Originally posted by Psyco Groupie
this is no flame, the inflation has nothing todo with economics its just demand and/or everyone hording parts and none are will to trade and compelte chips

psycho, i couldn't disagree more.

The point of my research is to just get a rough idea of how to correct inflation without over correcting, and to do that you have to have a vaugely decent idea of how much money is out there. And as far as people holding on to parts and chips, you do not think people in the real world hang on to assets even from one generation to the other? Another person told me that people get money by buying low and selling high (with barter). Yet that is another problem that is present in our current economy. I guess I may have stated this a little wrong, but my point of this project is to look at it more carefully so that I can intelligently give better solutions than "REWIPE THE SERVER" like most people are saying.

[Psyco Groupie]

absolutely, go for it !

[Carinth]

Money is hugely devalued, to the point were the really good/rare items are only available by barter. This was evident with MC5 parts, which were almost exclusively traded for other MC5 parts.

Setting aside exploits which boosted certain player's bank accounts, it is still reasonably easy to make money. Oddly enough, tradeskillers are probably the best at making money. Find yourself a constructor, researcher, and barter and you will be rolling in the dough. You just have to be willing to spend hours on end doing mindless boring tasks. After a couple days of solid work, you can easily hit the 18mil cap. Clans are even better at making money, you gain money for ops and gr's owned/used. Most clans have tradeskiller divisons, which they can put to work for the clan. It's not unexpected for clans to have upwards of 50mil in their clan account.

In complete contrast to this, it is blatantly clear Neocron's economy was not supposed to be flooded with this much money. Prices at shops and arbitrary limits in various fields, make you realize how different their expectations of the economy was. For example, the most expensive item in most stores averages about 50k. Vehicles can cost you more, up to a mil or so I believe, and there are a few items like maybe PA which are pricey. The StockX interface only allows you to manipulate 1000 shares of a stock at a time. You were not expected to dump millions in a given stock. The clan bank withdraw interface only allows you to withdraw 1mil at a time. There are prolly some others i cant think of at the moment. It's fairly obvious Neocron intended 1mil to be quite a lot of money and any more then that would be uncommon. With much more cash then the system was designed for, inflation occurs. Players have tons of cash and don't feel bad about spending outrageous prices. There is afterall little else to do with your money.

Another problem is that the difficulty to obtain (and by extension value) of items is not universal. For player X who has been here for a month to obtain rares he can either buy them from players at crazy prices, or hunt for them himself. The rare drop rate is moderate now, I believe. In contrast Player Z who has been here for 4 months has most likely an apt with the rares he collected before the drop rate was reduced. Because he was lucky enough to be here at the right time, item value is much reduced for Player Z. Player X on the other hand still has a pretty high item value since he has to put more work into it then Player Z did.

[SnotNosedBrat]

Originally posted by Psyco Groupie
this is no flame, the inflation has nothing todo with economics its just demand and/or everyone hording parts and none are will to trade and compelte chips

lol

you just completely contradicted yourself considering supply and demand is the foundation of almost all economic theory

[Ivory]

carinth is right there is so many factors that affect the economy of a certain server. if you want to do a comparison of different servers as i heard that each server has different econmies of scale and also supply and demand. I remember someone on trade selling a comp of mc5 herc for about 5 million and that was on saturn but people on different may sell it for less. However certain aspects need to identified but you prolly already know that. Supply and demand will prolly be the biggest factor in terms of items. The keynesian theory bored me to death (soz i hated studying the keynesian approach to economics.

I know this aint much it was last year i done economic issues and well for me that was a long time ago soz :(

[Original monk]

smal example: psicore on saturn 2 months ago : 5-7 mill
psicore on uranus 2 months ago: 1,5 mill

4 slot speedgatling on saturn 2 months ago: 3-5 mill (if sold)
4 slot speedgatling on uranus 2 months ago: 400k


small practical examples of economy on 2 diffrent servers :)

ffcourse you can buy em cheaper or more expensive ... but this is a small but realistic example

yesterday i saw a psicore on saturn go for 13 mill
last week i saw a psicore on saturn go for 14 mill :/

...

[Lexxuk]

Originally posted by Psyco Groupie
this is no flame, the inflation has nothing todo with economics its just demand and/or everyone hording parts and none are will to trade and compelte chips

i dont really know much about economics, or money, cause I spend all mine :( but there is a company called De Beer's or something, they do Diamonds. What they do, is they hoard diamonds away, to keep the prices high, if suddenly, there was an influx of twice the amount of diamonds on the market, the value of diamonds would drop "a lot" and the price of other rare gems (rubies/emeralds) would increase because of the devaluation of diamonds compared to these other rare gems. So, in closing, i think you just described price control inflation :D either that or the drugs are wearing off and i should see the shrink :D

[Carinth]

Yea it's pretty well known that Saturn has had huge inflation in comparison to the other servers. In some cases I heard of items being sold for twice as much on Saturn as on Pluto. I always figured it was the 1char vs 4char thing, but that Uranus also had lower prices kind of throws a wrench in that. I figured prices were high on saturn because with 4 character slots, you are much more likely to see new players around. Thus each person has a high demand for items accross the board. On a single player server the majority of players are high level, new players are either people rerolling or actualy new characters. So each person's demand is much less since they only need equipment for one character. For example a CS is completely useless to me, I would find a Tank and hope he happens to need one and has something to trade or some money to burn. Most often though, since the Tank only has his Tank to worry about he prolly already has a CS. Unless this CS happens to be better, there's little need for another one. On a four char server though, you would be more inclined to hold onto the CS because you might have a Tank alt or might be making one soon. Larger population (4chars) and smaller resource pool (people tend to horde rather then sell off) means you would end up with a fairly high demand and thus high prices. In contrast on a single char server you have Small population and large resource pool which is why demand is less and thus prices are down.

It makes perfect sense to me, but I can't account for Uranus having low prices. Maybe people on Uranus pretend it's a one char server? Or the majority of them treat it as such.

[Beanie McChimp]

On uranus it seems well known and high influence people have ridiculous prices and low influence people i.e clanless have low prices like when i wanted a PE no slotter I went to a high influence high level clan member he quoted 4 mill for it then I went to a clanless high level 300k