We present a novel methodology to determine the fundamental value of firms in the social-networking sector based on two ingredients: (i) revenues and profits are inherently linked to its user basis through a direct channel that has no equivalent in other sectors; (ii) the growth of the number of...

On December 16, Zynga, the well-known social game developing company went public. This event is following other recent IPOs in the world of social networking companies, such as Groupon, Linkedin or Pandora to cite a few. With a valuation close to 7 billion USD at the time when it went public,...

We present a novel methodology to determine the fundamental value of firms in the social-networking sector, motivated by recent realized IPOs and by reports that suggest sky-high valuations of firms such as Facebook, Groupon, LinkedIn Corp., Pandora Media Inc, Twitter, Zynga. Our valuation of...

We define a financial bubble as a period of unsustainable growth, when the price of an asset increases ever more quickly, in a series of accelerating phases of corrections and rebounds. More technically, during a bubble phase, the price follows a faster-than-exponential power law growth process,...

The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is stressing the world population, health care system and economies at a level not experienced since WWII or the last “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918. This shock provides a real-life test of the resilience of human societies, challenging our understanding and...

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 present a new Monte-Carlo methodology to forecast the crude oil production of Norway and the U.K. based on a two-step process, (i) the nonlinear extrapolation of the current/past performances of individual oil fields and (ii) a stochastic model of the frequency of future oil field...

On December 16th, 2011, Zynga, the well-known social game developing company went public. This event followed other recent IPOs in the world of social networking companies, such as Groupon or Linkedin among others. With a valuation close to 7 billion USD at the time when it went public, Zynga...

Using open source data, we observe the fascinating dynamics of nighttime light. Following a global economic regime shift, the planetary center of light can be seen moving eastwards at a pace of about 60 km per year. Introducing spatial light Gini coefficients, we find a universal pattern of...