A challenge to the conventional wisdom surrounding financial risk, providing insight into why easy solutions to control the financial system are doomed to fail Finance plays a key role in the prosperity of the modern world—but it also brings grave dangers. We seek to manage those threats with a vast array of sophisticated mathematical tools and techniques of financial risk management. Too often, though, we fail to address the greatest risk—the peril posed by our own behavior. Jón Daníelsson argues that critical risk is generated from within, through the interactions of individuals and perpetuated by their beliefs, objectives, abilities, and prejudices. He asserts that the widespread belief that risk originates outside the financial system frustrates our ability to measure and manage it, and the likely consequences of new regulations will help alleviate small-scale risks but, perversely, encourage excessive risk taking. Daníelsson uses lessons from past and recent crises to show that diversity is the best way to safeguard our financial system.

zlib/Business & Economics/Markets/Jon Danielsson/The Illusion of Control: Why Financial Crises Happen, and What We Can (and Can’t) Do About It_23773151.epub

Jón Daníelsson

Danielsson, Jon

Jón Danielsson

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Brandywine River Museum

Mariners' Museum, The

United States, United States of America

New Haven, Connecticut, 2022

A challenge to the conventional wisdom surrounding financial risk, providing insight into why easy solutions to control the financial system are doomed to fail
Finance plays a key role in the prosperity of the modern world, but it also brings grave dangers. We seek to manage those threats with a vast array of sophisticated mathematical tools and techniques of financial risk management. Too often, though, we fail to address the greatest riskthe peril posed by our own behavior.
Jn Danelsson argues that critical risk is generated from within, through the interactions of individuals and perpetuated by their beliefs, objectives, abilities, and prejudices. He asserts that the widespread belief that risk originates outside the financial system frustrates our ability to measure and manage it, and the likely consequences of new regulations will help alleviate small-scale risks but, perversely, encourage excessive risk taking. Danelsson uses lessons from past and recent crises to show that diversity is the best way to safeguard our financial system.

Finance brings prosperity and danger. We use measurements of risk to try and control the dangers of investments while maximizing our growth. Current strategies rely on mathematical techniques and historical data to predict future risk, but ignore the human component, failing to take into account the nature of risk inherent in the system.0 Jon Danielsson argues that critical risk is generated from within, through the interactions of individuals and perpetuated by their beliefs, objectives, abilities, and prejudices. He asserts that the widespread belief that risk originates outside the financial system frustrates our ability to measure and manage it, and the likely consequences of new regulations will help alleviate small-scale risks but, perversely, encourage excessive risk taking. Danielsson uses lessons from past and recent crises to show that diversity is the best way to safeguard our financial system

The widespread belief that risk originates outside the financial system undermines our ability to measure and manage it. Risk, Jón Daníelsson argues, is generated through the interactions of individuals, but current measurement techniques ignore its human component. Encouraging diversity is the best way to safeguard our financial system.

2023-01-19