Eur. Phys. J. B (2016) 89: 184
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2016-70243-y

Regular Article

Propensity to spending of an average consumer over a brief period

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica E.R.Caianiello, Università di Salerno, 84084 Fisciano ( SA), Italy
² Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche, Università di Napoli Federico II, 80126 Napoli, Italy
³ INFN Sezione di Napoli, 80126 Napoli, Italy

^a e-mail: rdeluca@unisa.it

Received: 22 April 2016
Received in final form: 24 June 2016
Published online: 29 August 2016

Abstract

Understanding consumption dynamics and its impact on the whole economy and welfare within the present economic crisis is not an easy task. Indeed the level of consumer demand for different goods varies with the prices, consumer incomes and demographic factors. Furthermore crisis may trigger different behaviors which result in distortions and amplification effects. In the present work we propose a simple model to quantitatively describe the time evolution over a brief period of the amount of money an average consumer decides to spend, depending on his/her available budget. A simple hydrodynamical analog of the model is discussed. Finally, perspectives of this work are briefly outlined.