Commun. Comput. Phys., 1 (2006), pp. 503-510. Role of Selective Interaction in Wealth Distribution Abhijit Kar Gupta 1*1 Department of Physics, Panskura Banamali College, Panskura R. S., East Midnapore, WB Pin-721 152, India. Received 10 September 2005; Accept (in revised version) 3 October 2005 Communicated by Dietrich Stauffer Abstract In our simplified description `wealth' is money ($m$). A kinetic theory of a gas like model of money is investigated where two agents interact (trade) selectively and exchange some amount of money between them so that sum of their money is unchanged and thus total money of all the agents remains conserved. The probability distributions of individual money ($P(m)$ vs. $m$) is seen to be influenced by certain ways of selective interactions. The distributions shift away from Boltzmann-Gibbs like the exponential distribution, and in some cases distributions emerge with power law tails known as Pareto's law ($P(m) \propto m^{-(1+\alpha)}$). The power law is also observed in some other closely related conserved and discrete models. A discussion is provided with numerical support to obtain insight into the emergence of power laws in such models. Notice: Undefined variable: ams in /var/www/html/issue/abstract/readabs.php on line 163 Notice: Undefined variable: pac in /var/www/html/issue/abstract/readabs.php on line 164 Key words: Kinetic theory; selective interaction; disparity; wealth distribution; Pareto's law. Notice: Undefined variable: email in /var/www/html/issue/abstract/readabs.php on line 168 Correspondence to: Abhijit Kar Gupta , Department of Physics, Panskura Banamali College, Email: abhijit_kargupta@rediffmail.com