We construct risk-neutral return probability distributions from S&P 500 options data over the decade 2003 to 2013, separable into pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis regimes. The pre-crisis period is characterized by increasing realized and, especially, option-implied returns. This translates...

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the GDPs of the US and the eurozone have grown astonishing slowly and have not yet recovered their pre-crisis rates, as of 2016. Here, we argue that, in order to escape further sluggish growth, we need to diagnose the present ailments as rooted in...

The financial crisis of 2008, which started with an initially well-defined epicenter focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS), has been cascading into a global economic recession, whose increasing severity and uncertain duration has led and is continuing to lead to massive losses and damage...

The financial crisis of 2008, which started with an initially well-defined epicenter focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS), has been cascading into a global economic recession, whose increasing severity and uncertain duration has led and is continuing to lead to massive losses and damage...

We develop the concept of “dragon-kings” corresponding to meaningful outliers, which are found to coexist with power laws in the distributions of event sizes under a broad range of conditions in a large variety of systems. These dragon-kings reveal the existence of mechanisms of...

Using the mechanics of creep in material sciences as a metaphor, we present a general framework to understand the evolution of financial, economic and social systems and to construct scenarios for the future. In a nutshell, highly non-linear out-of-equilibrium systems subjected to exogenous...

We identify the origin of the contradicting perspectives on credit creation offered by Austrian, Mainstream and Post Keynesian economists as the neglect of the primacy of such assets as goods, properties and securities, which always pre-exist any transaction and loan. We develop a unified...

Financial bubbles are subject to debate and controversy. However, they are not well understood and are hardly ever characterised specifically, especially ex ante. We define a bubble as a period of unsustainable growth, when the price of an asset increases ever more quickly, in a series of...

We propose a reduced form model for the Minskian dynamics of liquidity and of asset prices in terms of the so-called financial accelerator mechanism. In a nutshell, credit creation is driven by the market value of the financial assets employed as collateral in the bank loans. This leads to a...

Abreu and Brunnermeier (2003) have argued that bubbles are not suppressed by arbitrageurs because they fail to synchronise on the uncertain beginning of the bubble. We propose an indirect quantitative test of this hypothesis and confront it with the alternative according to which bubbles persist...