The failure of individual firms in the banking industry poses a unique threat to the entire economy. Emerging wisdom on systemic risk has identified two shortcomings in traditional regulatory approaches, all of which failed to anticipate the financial crisis of 2008-09. First, static measures of...

Despite the rise of multi-factor models emphasizing value, firm size, and momentum, beta remains the primary measure of risk in asset pricing. Designed to define systematic risk, net of idiosyncratic risk that can be neutralized through diversification, beta combines a measure of volatility with...

This book rehabilitates beta as a definition of systemic risk by using particle physics to evaluate discrete components of financial risk. Much of the frustration with beta stems from the failure to disaggregate its discrete components; conventional beta is often treated as if it were "atomic"...