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The Economist recently reported that infrastructure spending is the largest it is ever been as a share of world GDP. With $22 trillion in projected investments over the next ten years in emerging economies alone, the magazine calls it the…
At what level should government or companies support research? This complex multi-faceted question encompasses such qualitative bonus as satisfying natural human curiosity, the quest for knowledge and the impact on education and culture,…
The recent availability of data for cities has allowed scientists to exhibit scalings which present themselves in the form of a power-law dependence with population of various socio-economical and structural indicators. We propose here a…
In the presence of a layer of metaprobabilities (from uncertainty concerning the parameters), the asymptotic tail exponent corresponds to the lowest possible tail exponent regardless of its probability. The problem explains "Black Swan"…
Advances in mathematical epidemiology have led to a better understanding of the risks posed by epidemic spreading and informed strategies to contain disease spread. However, a challenge that has been overlooked is that, as a disease becomes…
Using a methodology similar to that used the in the worldwide research, the cost performance of Dutch large-scale transport infrastructure projects is determined. In the Netherlands, cost overruns are as common as cost underruns but because…
Extreme events have an important role which is sometime catastrophic in a variety of natural phenomena including climate, earthquakes and turbulence, as well as in man-made environments like financial markets. Statistical analysis and…
Crime rates per capita are used virtually everywhere to rank and compare cities. However, their usage relies on a strong linear assumption that crime increases at the same pace as the number of people in a region. In this paper, we…
Extreme events can come either from point processes, when the size or energy of the events is above a certain threshold, or from time series, when the intensity of a signal surpasses a threshold value. We are particularly concerned by the…
Many natural and socio-economic systems are characterized by power-law distributions that make the occurrence of extreme events not negligible. Such events are sometimes referred to as Black Swans, but a quantitative definition of a Black…
Detection of power-law behavior and studies of scaling exponents uncover the characteristics of complexity in many real world phenomena. The complexity of financial markets has always presented challenging issues and provided interesting…
Why are human societies unstable? Theories based on the observation of recurring patterns in historical data indicate that economic inequality, as well as social factors are key drivers. So far, models of this phenomenon are more…
The study of heavy-tailed distributions in economic and financial systems has been widely addressed since financial time series has become a research subject.After the eighties, several "highly improbable" market drops were observed (e.g.…
Implementing large-scale information and communication technology (IT) projects carries large risks and easily might disrupt operations, waste taxpayers' money, and create negative publicity. Because of the high risks it is important that…
Are there general principles governing the process by which certain products or ideas become popular relative to other (often qualitatively similar) competitors? To investigate this question in detail, we have focused on the popularity of…
This paper proposes a new measure of tail risk spillover. The empirical application provides evidence of significant volatility and tail risk spillovers from the financial sector to many real economy sectors in the U.S. economy in the…
Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multibillion-dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly…
Damage cost curves -- relating the typical damage of a natural hazard to its physical magnitude -- represent an indispensable ingredient necessary for climate change impact assessments. Combining such curves with the occurrence probability…
In an Ultrafast Extreme Event (or Mini Flash Crash), the price of a traded stock increases or decreases strongly within milliseconds. We present a detailed study of Ultrafast Extreme Events in stock market data. In contrast to popular…
We study the effects of randomness on competitions based on an elementary random process in which there is a finite probability that a weaker team upsets a stronger team. We apply this model to sports leagues and sports tournaments, and…