Dealing with Black Swans

A Princeton economist convincingly shows that human enterprise and innovation could yet cope with them successfully

The Resilient Society: Economics after Covid

Author: Markus K Brunnermeier

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: xiv + 412 pp  

Price: Rs 699

Nassim Nicholas Taleb called the 2008 subprime meltdown and the subsequent economic crisis a black swan event, signifying its rarity. Black swans as birds exist in significant numbers, as are black swan events more common than assumed earlier, something Taleb himself underlined. A little over a decade later another anomalous event, the Covid-19 pandemic, caused a far greater shock to the world economy. Markus K Brunnermeier, professor at Princeton Uni­versity, says in his book under review, “In the future, [it] will probably be