Pandora’s Risk: Uncertainty at the Core of Finance

Kent Osband

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July, 2011
Cloth, 304 pages, 40 line drawings, 5 tables
ISBN: 978-0-231-15172-6
$49.95 / £34.50

Author of the acclaimed work Iceberg Risk: An Adventure in Portfolio Theory, Kent Osband argues that uncertainty is central rather than marginal to finance. Markets don’t trade mainly on changes in risk. They trade on changes in beliefs about risk, and in the process, markets unite, stretch, and occasionally defy beliefs. Recognizing this truth would make a world of difference in investing. Belittling uncertainty has created a rift between financial theory and practice and within finance theory itself, misguiding regulation and stoking huge financial imbalances.

Sparking a revolution in the mindset of the investment professional, Osband recasts the market as a learning machine rather than a knowledge machine. The market continually errs, corrects itself, and makes new errors. Respecting that process, without idolizing it, will promote wiser investment, trading, and regulation. With uncertainty embedded at its core, Osband’s rational approach points to a finance theory worthy of twenty-first-century investing.

Related Subjects

• Business

Series

• Columbia Business School Publishing

About the Author

Kent Osband has worked for twenty-five years as a strategist/economist for major investment firms, international financial institutions, and think tanks. He holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught at Harvard University and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Iceberg Risk: An Adventure in Portfolio Theory.

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