A Versatile Stochastic Dissemination Model

Abstract

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).