Friday, October 03, 2008

Wall Street's 'Colossal' Risk Management Failure




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It seems clear that no one really knows what is coming next. Why?

Well, part of the reason is that economists still try to understand markets by using ideas from traditional economics, especially so-called equilibrium theory.

Really understanding what’s going on means going beyond equilibrium thinking and getting some insight into the underlying ecology of beliefs and expectations, perceptions and misperceptions, that drive market swings.

....models of deregulated electricity markets are being developed by a handful of researchers around the world, who see them as the only way of reckoning intelligently with the design of extremely complex deregulated electricity markets, where faith in the reliability of equilibrium reasoning has already led to several disasters, in California, notoriously, and more recently in Texas.

If we’re really going to avoid crises, we’re going to need something more imaginative, starting with a more open-minded attitude to how science can help us understand how markets really work. Done properly, computer simulation represents a kind of “telescope for the mind,” multiplying human powers of analysis and insight just as a telescope does our powers of vision. With simulations, we can discover relationships that the unaided human mind, or even the human mind aided with the best mathematical analysis, would never grasp.

Better market models alone will not prevent crises, but they may give regulators better ways for assessing market dynamics, and more important, techniques for detecting early signs of trouble. Economic tradition, of all things, shouldn’t be allowed to inhibit economic progress.







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