Small-World Effects in Wealth Distribution

Abstract

We construct a model of wealth distribution, based on an interactive multiplicative stochastic process on static complex networks. Through numerical simulations we show that a decrease in the number of links discourages equality in wealth distribution, while the rewiring of links in small-world networks encourages it. Inequal distributions obey log-normal distributions, which are produced by wealth clustering. The rewiring of links breaks the wealth clustering and makes wealth obey the mean field type (power law) distributions. A mechanism that explains the appearance of log-normal distributions with a power law tail is proposed.