An article that talks about how Greece's finance minister Varoufakis used the videogame Team Fortress 2 to study the eurozone.
I've posted up a stack of comments from various finance ministers, central bankers and so on who all met up for a sleepover at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings on Saturday in Washington.
But now, time for something a bit more interesting:
- Team Fortress 2 is a game developed by Valve Corporation
- Varoufakis agreed to become Valve's economist in residence
- On his blog, Varoufakis described videogames as an "economist's paradise."
- Following his work with Valve, Varoufakis wrote a paper about "arbitrage"-trade which relies on the gap between the cost of buying an item and its possible sales price
- He was also able to observe whether the barter system moved toward a currency system
"Currency selection is based on some necessary features-liquidity, intrinsic value, aesthetics, relative price-but also some intangibles. Why cigarettes in prison, or particular baseball cards among teenagers in the 1960s, or salt in medieval Asia?"
Now, however, he has a much bigger sandpit to play in: the eurozone
