Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Contribution to Economics
The assignment extends your last essay to discuss the economic theories that define your economist and connect the work to their background.
Begin by finding three more references, including a substantive work authored by the economist. I put several of my books on course reserve in the library; you can borrow them for two days at a time. Other places to look for the material include the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Nobel Prize website. Be sure to explain the theory, why it is important, how it differs from other economic ideas, and whether everyone else agrees. The material on the economic theories should be at least three full pages of text.
Library Course Reserves (link)
National Bureau of Economic Research (link)
Nobel Prize (link)
The assignment is also an opportunity to revise the paper's first section further. As you know, I evaluate the grammar as I grade the work, so you need to examine each sentence individually (word choice, verb tense, spelling, capitalization, etc.) or use a tool like Grammarly. Remember to follow the APA guidelines, including a complete cover page, page numbers, and the recommended format (page layout and font).
APA Template Word Document (link)
Grammarly (link)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Contribution to Economics
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Contribution to Economics
Aside from his educational experience, Taleb has extensive professional experience in essay writing, mathematical statistics, trading, risk analysis, and aphorism. This combination of experiences made him a global figure concerned with uncertainty, probability, and randomness through his work. His famous work, The Incerto, is a volume of philosophical essays on uncertainty consisting of four books: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, the Bed of Procrustes, and Antifragile. Fooled by Randomness focuses on the fallibility of human knowledge and the role of probability and chance in life. In Antifragile, Taleb discussed how some things benefit from shock, risk, and uncertainty. He also brought the Black Swan metaphor to the center of risk analysis debates. From this work, he developed what has come to be known as the Black Swan Theory through one of his most successful books, The Black Swan.
The Black Swan Theory
The Black Swan theory (also called the theory of black swan events) metaphorically implies that rare events that come as a surprise have a massive effect and are often inappropriately. The term is borrowed from an ancient European saying that assumed black swans did not exist until when they encountered them through their forays into the New World (Taleb, 2007). The theory focuses on explaining three main issues. First is the disproportionate role of hard-to-predict, high profile, and rare events that contradict normal expectations in technology, history, finance, and science. The 2008-09 economic recession, for instance, is an example of such events. It is an example of a rare event that is hard to predict and for which people do not always learn from or prepare adequately. However, Taleb speculates that there is potential for gains in its randomness. For instance, during the 2008 economic recession, some people like Taleb made gains while other people lost their savings.
The second aspect is the non-computability of the likelihood of meaningful events through scientific techniques. In other words, the theory shows that events such as the 2008-09 recession cannot be sufficiently predicted because of the nature of small probabilities. As explained under the Prospect Theory, these small probabilities make people assume that such events will never occur. In essence, Black Swan events have a low probability of occurring, and therefore, people generally assume that they will never oc...