Contagion: epidemiological models and financial crises

Abstract

Since the 1990s, economists have drawn on the epidemiology of emerging infectious diseases to explain the diffusion of shock through an increasingly complex financial system. The successful coordination of public health responses to disease threats, and in particular the epidemiological modelling underpinning infection control, has influenced economists' understanding of the risks posed to the stability of the financial system by 'contagion'. While the exportation of analytic models and frames of reference can be fruitful, reinvigorating the destination domain, such analogizing can have a distorting effect. There are differences between biological and financial systems. Moreover, the migration of highly context-specific epidemiological models may undermine the basis of the analogy. Finally, there may be repercussions for the efficacy of public health in the way that its aims are misconstrued in financial analyses.

Euro crisis metaphors in the Spanish press

“…The use of "contagion" metaphors has many implications on how the crisis is understood as having something of an epidemic character -transmitted from healthy to sick bodies -that can reduce to some extent the responsibility of the "infected". The contagion metaphor establishes an analogy between the economic and the medical world, a very popular comparison since the 1990s, but not free from serious problems when applied to the economic and financial world (Peckham, 2014). These findings confirm H1 implying that the more common metaphors, especially disease and nature metaphors, were dominant in the press discourse on the euro crisis.…”

Retos sobre la carga epidemiológica y económica para diabetes e hipertensión en México

“…Insurance systems are financed with public resources from taxes. Given the global economic crisis and its effects on health 24 , health budgets, particularly for Mexico and most Latin American countries, have declined significantly in recent years 25 . More than ever, efficient institutions are needed to allocate and manage resources.…”

Efficient simulation of non-Markovian dynamics on complex networks

“…Infected agents can recover (become susceptible again) or infect neighboring susceptible agents. -type diffusion models have proven to be useful for the analysis, prediction, and reconstruction of opinion- and meme-spreading in online social networks [ 7 , 8 ] as well as for the propagation of neural activity [ 9 , 10 ], and the spread of malware [ 11 ] and blackouts in financial institutions [ 12 , 13 ].…”