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The emergence of social inequality: a co-evolutionary analysis.

Oliveira, Fernando S.

Authors

Fernando S. Oliveira



Abstract

Social inequality is an important issue at the core of economic thought. Based on a stylized pie-sharing game, this article proposes a co-evolutionary computational model to study the interaction between social classes, aiming to answer the following questions: Why do social classes exist, and how do they affect social efficiency and individual effectiveness? Why are wealth inequality and social exclusion persistent? From a methodological perspective, this article extends the pie-sharing game to include a network of interactions and classes, social mobility, evolving wealth, and learning agents. The results show that social inequality is self-emergent. Surprisingly, in the simulations, the existence of social classes increases individual effectiveness, mainly benefiting the poor. Nonetheless, flatter societies (where social classes exist) have a higher average individual effectiveness. As expected, it was observed that wealth inequality is persistent in hierarchical societies, and the upper classes keep a higher proportion of wealth. Furthermore, the analysis extends the bargaining game to include social mobility, showing that, surprisingly, it increases the robustness of the class system and wealth inequality. Finally, the simulation of dual societies shows that these are an evolutionary equilibrium: social exclusion is persistent and accepted by wealthy and poor individuals, and resources are efficiently used.

Citation

OLIVEIRA, F.S. 2023. The emergence of social inequality: a co-evolutionary analysis. Journal of economic behavior and organization [online], 215, pages 192-206. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.06.003

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 7, 2023
Online Publication Date Sep 23, 2023
Publication Date Nov 30, 2023
Deposit Date Sep 29, 2023
Publicly Available Date Sep 29, 2023
Journal Journal of economic behavior and organization
Print ISSN 0167-2681
Electronic ISSN 1879-1751
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 215
Pages 192-206
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.06.003
Keywords Agent-based model; Evolutionary games; Inequality; Reinforcement learning
Public URL https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/2093042

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OLIVEIRA 2023 The emergence of social inequality (VOR) (2.8 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).





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