“Global crisis” – what if lots of catastrophes happen at once?
BOOK REVIEW: Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, Geoffrey Parker, 2013, Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15323-1. What happens when lots of catastrophes happen at once? Geoffrey Parker’s book describes a period in history – the … Continued
The web of trust in cyber space: tracing systemic risk patterns
SSL/TLS is an encryption mechanism that keeps your data confidential between your browser and a webpage. This system protects your data between you and (for example) your bank. To do such things, a bank needs a certificate. That certificate can … Continued
The art of financial network science
There was an amazing array of images of financial networks at the seminar on Financial Risk and Network Theory to launch the new journal on Network Theory in Finance. Have a look at these visualizations from some of the 23 … Continued
Just in case… Hong Kong’s autumn forecast: pack an umbrella
Earlier in the year, the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies ran a stress test to factor the global economic risk of a hypothetical ‘Millennial uprising’ – that is, a far reaching anti-austerity protest, helmed by the young, the educated and … Continued
The circulatory system of finance
In the Great Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2009, investment portfolios took big hits on their value, with indices like the Dow Jones falling to less than half of their pre-crisis peak by March 2009. Analysts said that the financial … Continued
Bigger data, smaller risk
Risk Managers have never been short of data – they are usually drowning in it – so they can be forgiven for not getting too excited about the prospect of ‘Big Data’: the idea of orders of magnitude more digital … Continued
Ebola adds another wake-up call to businesses
The price of gold has stuttered this week and the stock price of metal producing companies has been marked down as mines in western and central Africa are closed in response to the growing Ebola epidemic. In recent decades, West … Continued