It is assumed that the reader is at least loosely familiar with Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson's work as CCP's private economist (if not, examples of his work are archived by CCP LINK and media coverage thereof is widely available). Although the EVE economy has changed significantly since these publications were written, the most salient point that endures may be the growing concern in Eyjólfur's final reports regarding the trading volume of financial products (namely PLEX) as a proportion of the ISK economy; Eyjólfur's fear of a runaway inflationary cycle leads him to suggest in the 2010Q4 report that the contemporary policy of the "EVE Central Bank" should be to decrease the money supply of ISK.

In the years that follow Eyjólfur's departure from CCP in 2011, CCP staff come to the conclusion LINK that despite the presence of tremendous monetary inflation (growth of the ISK money supply), very little actual price inflation has occured (echoing some empirical reviews LINK of Federal Reserve QE policies). Centering the discussion around a number of price indices, the CCP stance now incorporates the money velocity of ISK to determine that despite the slide in CPI numbers, the economy has not produced a material amount of inflation or deflation. The 2012 report ends on an optimistic note, suggesting an uptick in demand-driven growth. Notably,

The correlation between the velocity of money and the CPI seems to change by the end of 2008. From January 2007 to October 2008, the correlation between the two series is 0.86, which is quite strong for a non-academic case like this one. From November 2008 to February 2012 the correlation is -0.01, which is just about as uncorrelated as possible. So, what happened in November 2008? PLEX was introduced. PLEX seems to increase the velocity of money in the New Eden economy as it "liberates" ISK from people with more money than they know what to do with and gets it to ISK needy people that create and sell PLEX. [emphasis added] ... An important factor in this was probably the absence of a trusted banking sector, which could offer interest and distribute the unused ISK to those in need of funds.

In other words, CCP realizes that the seeming glut of ISK has been hoarded in player/corp wallets which do not bear interest. This is at least worrisome because it means that traditional monetary easing ("ISK printing") cannot be trusted to have a stimulating fiscal effect (again similar to concerns surrounding the QE funds held by banks LINK LINK LINK etc. From CCP's perspective, a particularly troubling interpretation of this is that economic growth will become more expensive in terms of the new EVE subscribers required.

At EVE Vegas 2015, taking advantage of modern computing power, CCP Quant presents a large-scale update of the EVE macroeconomy while also annoucing the launch of the new Monthly Economic Reports. LINK Approximately half the report is about inflation, including a brief mention of PLEX prices. However, the report seems to go out of its way to avoid any normative discussion about the CPI numbers which by themselves indicate no material change in the rate of inflation. The silence is poignant, especially after the defense of subscription numbers that opens the report.

While this is only a brief excerpt of the economic research graciously compiled and published over the years, it does suggest that ISK deflation (and more specifically, how it has been addressed in the past) has become a key economic concern for CCP.

It is worth briefly touching on the contemporaraneous RMT ("real-money-transaction") scandal that CCP has been addressing (there are other sources that can provide much more detail LINK). Due to the fact that USD/ISK transactions are explicitly prohibited (traders must purchase primary-market PLEX or PLEX-denominated commodities to sell for ISK on CCP controlled markets), the only way to legally sell an ISK position for USD (or any other currency for that matter) is to redeem it for game time. The difference in the USD subscription price and the USD/PLEX rate represents a frictional transaction cost that can be modeled against a risk premium for black market PLEX or ISK.