This piece is cross-posted from the Global Policy blog, where it has been published as part of Global Policy’s new e-book, ‘Emergence, Convergence and the Future of Aid’, edited by Andy Sumner. Contributions from academics and practitioners will be serialised on Global Policy until the e-book’s release in the first quarter of 2014. Find out […]
A wonderfully written piece in today’s FT Magazine by Stephen Foley, on the changing role of physicists in financial markets. A short extract below, and the full article is here (sign up may be required but is free for a certain number of articles). ‘…complex systems are not systematically predictable. They’re only predictable in some regimes…’ The […]
This is the editorial from this weeks’ New Scientist, which looks at complex systems approaches in the context of the US shutdown. I especially like the line towards the end: ‘Few politicians are familiar with this emerging science, and many will be constitutionally disinclined to embrace it.’ If history really is, in the famous dictum, […]
Many would argue that standard economic theory enabled us to analyse and understand the economy as it used to be, with long stable periods punctuated only by occasional crises. However, the recent evolution of the global economy should drive us to pursue ways of expanding economic theory such that it encompasses the new structures and […]
As concern grows about H7N9 in China, this post explores the importance of managing such pandemic risks through collaboration, innovation and systemic thinking In the month of World Health Day (April 8th), the latest outbreak of bird flu in Asia provided a sobering sense of the challenges the international community still faces. To date, H7N9 […]
Many people around the world were deeply saddened to hear of the death of Elinor Ostrom in June this year. By way of a tribute, this extended piece brings together some of her ideas on the implications of complexity science for development aid. It draws on material from a series of interviews I conducted with Professor […]
Aid on the Edge of Chaos 