Multiple aspects of an economy can be regulated, tampered with, or left to chance. Economic actors can exploit these degrees of freedom, at a cost, to bend the flow of wealth in their favor. If intervention becomes widespread, microeconomic strategies of different actors can build into emergent macroeconomic effects. How viable is a “rigged” economy? How do growing economic complexity and wealth affect it? We study rigged economies with a toy model. In it, economic degrees of freedom progress from minority to coordination games as intervention increases. Growing economic complexity spontaneously defuses cartels. But excessive complexity leads to large-fluctuations regimes, threatening the system’s stability. Simulations suggest that wealth must grow faster than linearly with economic complexity to avoid this regime and keep economies viable in the long run. We discuss a real-case scenario of multiple economic actors coordinated to result in an emergent upset of the stock market.

中文翻译：

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操纵经济中的游戏

一个经济体的多个方面可以被监管、篡改或任其随机应变。经济行为者可以利用这些自由度，但要付出代价，使财富流动对他们有利。如果干预变得普遍，不同参与者的微观经济战略就会形成新兴的宏观经济效应。“被操纵”的经济有多可行？日益增长的经济复杂性和财富如何影响它？我们用玩具模型研究被操纵的经济。其中，随着干预的增加，经济自由度从少数派发展到协调博弈。不断增长的经济复杂性自发地消除了卡特尔。但过度的复杂性会导致制度的大波动，威胁到系统的稳定性。模拟表明，财富的增长速度必须快于经济复杂性的线性增长，才能避免这种制度并保持经济的长期生存能力。我们讨论了多个经济参与者协调导致股市突然动荡的真实情况。