  We study the effect of altruism in two simple asset exchange models: the yard
sale model (winner gets a random fraction of the poorer player's wealth) and
the theft and fraud model (winner gets a random fraction of the loser's
wealth). We also introduce in these models the concept of bargaining
efficiency, which makes the poorer trader more aggressive in getting a
favorable deal thus augmenting his winning probabilities. The altruistic
behavior is controlled by varying the number of traders that behave
altruistically and by the degree of altruism that they show. The resulting
wealth distribution is characterized using the Gini index. We compare the
resulting values of the Gini index at different levels of altruism in both
models. It is found that altruistic behavior does lead to a more equitable
wealth distribution but only for unreasonable high values of altruism that are
difficult to expect in a real economic system.
