A New Heuristic Measure of Fragility and Tail Risks

Download or read book A New Heuristic Measure of Fragility and Tail Risks written by Mr.Nassim N. Taleb and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents a simple heuristic measure of tail risk, which is applied to individual bank stress tests and to public debt. Stress testing can be seen as a first order test of the level of potential negative outcomes in response to tail shocks. However, the results of stress testing can be misleading in the presence of model error and the uncertainty attending parameters and their estimation. The heuristic can be seen as a second order stress test to detect nonlinearities in the tails that can lead to fragility, i.e., provide additional information on the robustness of stress tests. It also shows how the measure can be used to assess the robustness of public debt forecasts, an important issue in many countries. The heuristic measure outlined here can be used in a variety of situations to ascertain an ordinal ranking of fragility to tail risks.