When controlling shareholders 'live like kings': The case of Telecom Italia

A complex systems approach to constructing better models for managing financial markets and the economy

Ourselves and our Interactions: The Ultimate Physics Problem?

I unfortunately lost my train of thought, which results in the cut here. What I wanted to say:
"This means you can forget about the equations and just start to understand the system by looking at the interactions. You can then understand the complex system by simulating it in a computer. As an example, you need three simple rules to simulate swarming behavior: Move in the same direction as your neighbor, stay close to your neighbor, but avoid collisions. If you think this is no big deal, think again. No one saw this coming. And to this day no one really knows why this is the way things are. It's as if reality is giving us a big help in understanding how stuff works. Like the 'miracle' I mentioned before, those equations mirror the workings of the universe. And it gets even better, because most complex systems have this amazing property called emergence. So this means that the system as a whole suddenly starts to show a behavior which cannot be understood or predicted by looking at the components of the system."

I misspoke when I said, "Thirty-six percent of the TNCs are in the core only ... ." Instead, I meant to say, "Thirty-six percent of the TNCs are in the *center* only."

Financial World Dominated by a Few Deep Pockets

To Navigate Economic Storms We Need Better Forecasting

James Glattfelder doet onderzoek naar complexiteit: hoe een onderling verbonden systeem -- bijvoorbeeld, een zwerm vogels -- meer kan zijn dan de som van zijn delen. En het blijkt dat de wetenschap van complexiteit een hoop kan onthullen over hoe de economie werkt. Glattfelder presenteert een grensverleggend onderzoek over hoe macht stroomt door de wereldeconomie en hoe de concentratie van macht in een schrikbarend klein aantal handen ons allen kwetsbaar maakt. (Gefilmd bij TEDxZurich.)

James B. Glattfelder: Wie heeft de macht in de wereld?

Modern economic crises have exposed the limits of traditional financial models, revealing that we often know more about the universe than our own economic systems. A groundbreaking study mapped 600,000 companies worldwide and discovered that just 737 top shareholders control 80 percent of transnational corporations’ value. Nearly all of these powerful actors are highly interconnected financial institutions, creating a dense core that dominates the global economy. Such concentration and interconnectivity pose systemic risks and call for new ways of understanding complexity in economics.