magnumT
The fact that their are professional economists who end up studying virtual economies depesses me.
It shouldn't.
It's actually an economical study that closely resembles the behavior of actual economics. All the factors that would usually affect a real life economy do affect a virtual economy such as Gaia's, and as such is a good place to observe and experiment with complete anonymity some of the intricacies of the system.
Renardius
Still, the effort seems a bit on the this-is-serious-business side to me.
For economists, economy is serious business, regardless of its reality/virtuality.