This paper considers a highly general dissemination model that keeps track of the stochastic evolution of the distribution of wealth over a set of agents. There are two types of events: (i) units of wealth externally arrive, and (ii) units of wealth are redistributed among the agents, while throughout Markov modulation is allowed. We derive a system of coupled differential equations describing the joint transient distribution of the agents’ wealth values, which translate into linear differential equations when considering the corresponding means and (co-)variances. While our model uses the (economic) terminology of wealth being distributed over agents, we illustrate through a series of examples that it can be used considerably more broadly. Indeed, it also facilitates the analysis of the spread of opinions over a population (thus generalizing existing opinion dynamics models), and the analysis of the dynamics of a file storage system (thus allowing the assessment of the efficacy of storage policies).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.