A deterministic system of coupled maps is proposed as a model for economic activity among interacting agents. The values of the maps represent the wealth of the agents. The dynamics of the system is controlled by two parameters. One parameter expresses the growth capacity of the agents and the other describes the local environmental pressure. For some values of the parameters, the system exhibits nontrivial collective behavior, characterized by macroscopic periodic oscillations of the average wealth of the system, emerging out of local chaos. The probability distribution of wealth in the asymptotic regime shows a power law behavior for some ranges of parameters.
