An Equilibrium Analysis of Scrip Systems

Abstract

A game-theoretic model of scrip (artificial currency) systems is analyzed. It is shown that relative entropy can be used to characterize the distribution of agent wealth when all agents use threshold strategies —that is, they volunteer to do work if and only if they have below a threshold amount of money. Monotonicity of agents' best-reply functions is used to show that scrip systems have pure strategy equilibria where all agents use threshold strategies. An algorithm is given that can compute such an equilibrium and the resulting distribution of wealth.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jun 23, 2015
Source ID
10.1145/2659006

Entities

People

  • Eric J. Friedman
  • Ian A. Kash
  • Joseph Halpern

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • Cornell University
  • Microsoft
  • National Science Foundation
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of California, Berkeley

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Economics

Readers

  • Game Theory.
  • Naval Personnel Management
  • Statistical inference.