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Economics: Meltdown modelling

Nature volume 460, pages 680–682 (2009)Cite this article

Could agent-based computer models prevent another financial crisis? Mark Buchanan reports.

It's 2016, and experts at a US government facility have detected a threat to national security. A screen on the wall maps the world's largest financial players — banks, governments and hedge funds — as well as the web of loans, ownership stakes and other legal claims that link them. High-powered computers have been using these enormous volumes of data to run through scenarios that flush out unexpected risks. And this morning they have triggered an alarm.

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  1. Mark Buchanan
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Additional information

See Editorial, page 667 , and Opinion, pages 685 and 687 .

Mark Buchanan is a science writer based in Cambridge, UK. After writing this story, he was involved in reviewing grant proposals on the topic of agent-based modelling.

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Buchanan, M. Economics: Meltdown modelling. Nature 460, 680–682 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/460680a

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