Determining the Money Supply of a Virtual World

6 Pages Posted: 12 Mar 2009

See all articles by Jesus Diaz

Jesus Diaz

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: March 11, 2009

Abstract

People have been studying virtual worlds for a while now, but there has been little discussion on the money supply. Currently, most virtual world developers do not publish data on the money supply and so I developed a method in estimating it. Using economic theory and the exchange rate, I was able to check the accuracy of my estimate. After applying my method to World of Warcraft, I believe there is over nine billion gold on North American servers. If that gold were converted to USD, it would be worth $192 million, and if the same held true for all World of Warcraft players, there would be $747 million.

Keywords: virtual world, money supply, mmo, mmorpg, world of warcraft

JEL Classification: L86

Suggested Citation

Diaz, Jesus, Determining the Money Supply of a Virtual World (March 11, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1357677 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1357677

Jesus Diaz (Contact Author)

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

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