Fisher Capital Management World News: Insights from ecologists show ways of preventing economic disaster

Global financial system, mirrored the complex but less disease-resistant ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforests, leading to its rapid decline from 2008. Photograph Getty Images



In the eight centuries from 1000-1800 AD the world’s fish stocks and species numbers were stable and healthy. In the subsequent 200 years, 40% of the species in coastal waters collapsed, showing falls in their population by 90% or more.

There was a pattern to this story of decline. There was a much-less marked attrition in coastal regions with richly diverse marine ecosystems than in regions exhibiting low levels of diversity.



What does this have to do with economics? Quite a lot, as it happens. In recent years, as the limitations of the rigidly mathematical approach to economics have been exposed, there has been interest in what the dismal science can learn from biologists, ecologists, geneticists, physicists and psychologists. » Fisher Capital Management World News: Insights from ecologists show ways of preventing economic disaster