Yakovenko O.G., Arkhipova I.D., Goncharova Y.S.

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University, Ukraine

MODELLING OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PANICS

A wide range of social and economic processes such as currency and stock panics, feverish demands for goods, spreading information technologies have similar features. This similarity is avalanche-like characteristic of these processes.

Avalanche socioeconomic process is a process of distribution of some property among subjects of socioeconomic relations through such types of socio-psychological mechanisms as suggestion, interaction and infection that leads to a sharp change in economic environment in a certain market segment.

As a rule, avalanche processes dramatically influence social, economic and political safety of the country and society, especially in the condition of a wide spread of information and telecommunication technologies and effect of globalization.

This type of process is one of the fastest processes in socio-economic system. It has various speed gradations, most widely such terms as a concern, an agiotage and a panic. The common characteristics of panics are “mass” involvement, “infection” effect and a chain reaction.

For instance, bank panic is a phenomenon of simultaneous bankruptcy of most banks. Normally, it happens due to an uncontrollable outflow of deposits. And it is considered to be the worst period of banking crises. One more example is a currency panic, when a quick growth of foreigner currency demand leads to a sharp increase of its exchange rate. We remember a period of presidential elections in Ukraine in 2004, when an agiotage currency demand made the National Bank of Ukraine to implement a moratorium on the rate’s growth.

People and mass media may be the source of panics [1]. There are distinguished infectors and conductors among them in certain cases. Infector is an object (a person or mass media) contaminated with panics and spreading it. Conductor is an object, which is not contaminated with panics, but spreading it intentionally.

The means of influence, which are put into effect in a crowd, are traditional: contamination, suggestion and imitation. Contamination is an interaction between the contaminator (the infector or conductor) and someone who is being contaminated (the recipient). During this interaction the former transmits and the latter receives and perceives the contagion, i.e. moves into a certain emotionally-psychological condition, follows certain type of behavior and yields to contagion. It is important to emphasize the double nature of the term “contamination”.

There are some important characteristics of the mechanism of contamination. First of all it is the synergy effect, i.e. a sharp increase of influence power of several contaminators – the communicators accompanied by the simultaneous influence upon the recipient.

The next characteristic, which is evident under the influence of mass media, is the necessity of having “leaders of opinions” or “agents of influence”, without which the influence of mass media will be minimal.

The well-known model of epidemic (spreading of infection) [2] was taken as the basis for the mathematic model of panic. The essence of it is the following. We indicate that:

 – is the number of healthy, immune to infection people;

 – is the number of infected (sick) people, who spread the infection;

 – is the number of people immune to illness (initially or after illness);

– is the total number of people, a constant.

.  (1)

The dynamics of certain groups can be described with the help of the following system of dif-equations

; ; , (2)

де  – the intensity of contamination,

 – the intensity of decrease in those who were contaminated.

This is the so-called SIR – the model of epidemic. It reflects the intuitive understanding of dependence of speed change in the number of elements from these three groups on the achieved parameters value.

Process of shifting into a panic state is not a determined, completely predictable event. The uncertainty of such shift is characterized by both vague and stochastic, casual nature. It depends on the above considered psychological characteristics of personality, the nature of the situation and the influence, and interaction of the sources of information as well.

Thus, studying this type of process and modelling them gives us possibilities to predict destructive for economic system consequences and manage them.

Literature:

1. Данич В.Н. Моделирование быстрых социально-экономических процессов: монография/ В.Н. Данич. – Луганск: Изд-во ВНУ им. В. Даля, 2004. – 304 с.

2. Doucet P. and Sloep P.B. Mathematical Modelling in the Life Sciences. Chichester: Ellis Horwood, 1992.