Self-organized criticality in a network of economic agents with finite consumption

Abstract: We introduce a simple model for addressing the controversy in the study of financial systems, sometimes taken as brownian-like processes and other as critical systems with fluctuations of arbitrary magnitude. The model considers a collection of economical agents which establish trade connections among them according to basic economical principles properly translated into physical properties and interaction. With our model we are able to reproduce the evolution of macroscopic quantities (indices) and to correctly retrieve the common exponent value characterizing several indices in financial markets, relating it to the underlying topology of connections.