The Illusion of Control, Jon Danielsson
The Illusion of Control, Jon Danielsson
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The Illusion of Control
Why Financial Crises Happen, and What We Can (and Can't) Do About It

Author: Jon Danielsson

Narrator: Bruce Mann

Unabridged: 10 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/19/2022


Synopsis

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.

About Jon Danielsson

Jon Danielsson is a professor of finance and the director of the Systemic Risk Centre at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Financial Risk Forecasting and Global Financial Systems: Stability and Risk.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nilesh on December 09, 2022

The Illusion of Control covers all the standard concepts linked to risk management. While the author props up to shoot down many a strawman to create the feeling that he is making some radical new points, there is almost nothing radically original. Readers new to the topic might find the book a good......more

Goodreads review by Lucille on January 27, 2024

A thoughtful work on the limits of risk modeling and how regulators ought to pursue macroprudential policy. Heavily inspired by Keynesian/Knighian conceptions of risk. Some poorly-informed comments on AI driven less by fundamental computational/mathematical understandings of the topic and more by po......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on June 17, 2023

Repeats the same 3 points over and over. The author is clearly an expert in (macro) regulations and the politics around it, so for someone new to the field the first third of the book is actually a very decent introduction., but that doesn't excuse the unnecessary repetitiveness. Also, some of the p......more

Goodreads review by David on February 26, 2023

Very opinionated with strong sourcing and theory behind it. Even after working on finance regulation for quite some time I honestly had to pause and research up some of the concepts and mainly abbreviations used and it is not the most approachable book. However, it did help me in a major way! It prov......more