I wonder if there are any serious academic researchers studying it? There was an economist who did some extensive studies of the EverQuest economy around 2002. It was interesting--he could not get any journals to publish his work, but it was the top download at SSRN (and even now, it remains the #6 download of all time there).

Here's an article about that: http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/info_and_tech/game_theories.ht...

I don't know about independent researchers but CCP, who run Eve, employ a full time economist who publishes quarterly reports on the state of the in-game economy.