Theory and Practice Online

According to Francesca Di Meglio of Business Week, researchers and academics are looking at virtual worlds to better understand real world economic questions. A recent SL conference was put on by the Cornell Business School professor Robert Bloomfield, whose real-world specialty is using lab experiments and mathematical models to study the effects of financial market regulation on investor welfare and how psychological forces affect financial market. Bloomfield points out that today's virtual economies are very much like the U.S. economy about 100 years ago, when there was no regulation whatsoever. Snippets from Business Week

Probably the best place to follow academic discussions about the business and legal issues of virtual worlds is Terra Nova. Their next State of Play conference is scheduled for August in Singapore. The original sponsor for this annual event was the New York Law School; current sponsors include the Berkman Center (Harvard), Yale Law School, Trinity University and Nanyang University. Speakers include John Seely Brown (University of Southern California), Cory Ondrejka (Linden Lab), Guntram Graef (co-founder of Anshe Chung Studios)and Judge Unggi Yoon of the Suwon District Court (Korea).