Praise for ICTP Statistical Physics

A recent Nature article titled "Systemic risk in banking ecosystems", written by Andrew G. Haldane of the Bank of England and Lord Robert M. May of Oxford University, highlights extensively work done by ICTP researcher Matteo Marsili and collaborators.

The article, which provides an overview of financial network models in light of the recent financial crisis, cites research by Marsili of ICTP's Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics (CMSP) section, Fabio Cacciolo (formerly of SISSA and now with the Santa Fe Institute) and Pierpaolo Vivo , a CMSP postdoctoral student, which appeared in European Physics Journal B (71, 467 - 479, 2009) and was titled "Eroding market stability by proliferation of financial instruments".

Haldane and May describe the work as "A sophisticated and important analysis of a major flaw in the pricing of derivatives".

The Nature article appears in the 20 January 2011 issue.