Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
News and Views
Nature 451, 893-895 (21 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/451893a; Published online 20 February 2008
Complex systems: Ecology for bankers
Robert M. May1, Simon A. Levin2 & George Sugihara1
Abstract
There is common ground in analysing financial systems and ecosystems, especially in the need to identify conditions that dispose a system to be knocked from seeming stability into another, less happy state.
'Tipping points', 'thresholds and breakpoints', 'regime shifts' — all are terms that describe the flip of a complex dynamical system from one state to another. For banking and other financial institutions, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression epitomize such an event.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).