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The purpose of this study is to propose a methodological approach for modeling catastrophic consequences caused by black swan events, based on complexity science, and framed on Feyerabend’s anarchistic theory of knowledge. An empirical application is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.

Thom’s nonlinear differential equations of morphogenesis are used to develop a theoretical model of the impact of catastrophes on international business (IB). The model is then estimated using real-world data on the performance of multinational airlines during the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The catastrophe model exhibits a remarkable capability to simultaneously capture complex linear and nonlinear relationships. Through empirical estimations and simulations, this approach enables the analysis of IB phenomena under normal conditions, as well as during black swan events.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first attempt to estimate the impact of black swan events in IB using a catastrophe model grounded in complexity theory. The proposed model successfully integrates the abrupt and profound effects of catastrophes on multinational corporations, offering a critical perspective on the theoretical and practical use of complexity science in IB.

There has been an increasing interest amongst the researchers to work and explore, “Black Swan” events which are not well studied. However, the “Black Swan” events hold an eminent relevance amongst academicians and practitioners. The present study offers nuanced understanding of “Black Swan” events.

We undertook an extensive bibliometric analysis of the extant literature using “Black Swan” as guiding keyword with the help of SCOPUS database.

The search for articles only yielded 59 articles. Our analyses highlight the prominent works, authors and journals. Further, this study reveal the research gaps that may help guide future scholars interested in “Black Swan” events to examine in different context.

The current study develops a research agenda and offers numerous research directions. Research on “Black Swan” events can be apprehended at three different stages – pre-black swan event, about black swan event and post-black swan event with identified sub-themes.

This paper is the pioneer research work to dedicatedly analyse the existing set of literature with “Black Swan”.

This study aims to propose that, in business-to-business (B2B) industries, number of strategic alliances firms established before a “black swan” event enhances their chances to survive the black swan, and the enhancements take place through moderation effects. Changes in firms’ core structures – their stated goals, authority structure, core technologies and marketing strategies – to adapt to business jolts have adverse effects on firm performance. Firms’ existing B2B strategic alliances moderate the effects negatively by outsourcing different goals, authority structures, core technologies and marketing strategies to partners who fit the changed environment.

This study collected quantitative data and analyzed the data with the regression method.

Using data from Chinese firms in five technology industries during the 2007–2009 economic crisis, this study finds that firms’ internal adaptation is negatively correlated with their performance during economic crises, and B2B strategic alliances negatively moderate this relationship.

First, this study focuses on B2B strategic alliances, and it is not clear whether the findings apply to B2C industries, where strategic alliances may not be common. Perhaps firms can use other means of survival in addition to strategic alliances in B2C industries. Second, this study does not differentiate between fast-moving and slow-moving industries, and it is not clear whether strategic alliances play the same role in both industries. Third, this study does not differentiate firm ages and sizes. It remains unclear how large, established and small, young firms differ when facing crises. Finally, this study is based on the Chinese setting, and it is not clear whether the findings apply to other markets as well. These issues should be explored in future studies.

Changing firms’ core structures harms their performance during black swan crises because such crises are unpredictable, and planned changes may not adapt firms to crises. Managers should not attempt to change their core structures during crises. B2B strategic alliances provide an effective means for firms to survive crises.

This paper makes two contributions to the existing literature: First, this paper demonstrates that changes of one of the four core structures of a firm to cope with black swan events have negative impacts on firm performance. Second, this paper identifies the importance of holding a variety of strategic alliances previously to the black swan events to reduce the negative impacts of changing core structures.

In these ever challenging times, conventional property decision theory appears inadequate to deal with black swan events: those unforseen, rare and extreme natural and man-made disasters. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research maps, characterises and assesses these threats into: Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns categories. Whereas, Known Knowns events can be managed and Unknown Unknowns events are difficult to even identify, those black swan Known Unknowns events that impact on a location, can be modelled based on available past and comparable evidence.

As a starting point, black swan management tools can utilise available prediction-based scale indices to highlight the possibility of these extreme events occurring in locations, and so form an important consideration for property asset managers in their decision-making process.

For property asset managers, this black swan management research attempts to identify, record and include those outlier events that directly impact on their property decision-making process. This can be undertaken by providing predictions as to the future occurrence of Known Unknown black swan events. These extreme events need to form an important part of a property asset manager's decision-making process. If overlooked, black swan events can have disastrous consequences for the valued client – building owner.

The primary purpose of this paper is to review and critique Taleb's notion of black swan blindness for a subset of the broader field of financial economics – the search for capital adequacy rules for financial institutions who invest in residential mortgages. This search entails the analysis and prediction of extreme events in housing and mortgage markets.

The focus of this paper concerns efforts to assess the likelihood and consequences of extreme and consequential economic events prior to their occurrence. The goal is to assess the criticism offered by Taleb that economists overstate the understanding of extreme events. One piece of evidence consists of a case study of the literature and policies regarding capital adequacy for financial institutions who invest in residential mortgages. The other is a review of recent literature about the crisis that offers similar conclusions.

The evidence suggests that the criticism is valid. The case study reviews a number of areas in which the search for capital adequacy reflected the traits of black swan blindness as described by Taleb. The review of the recent literature about the crisis highlights a number of papers that reach similar conclusions. These include high level overviews of the literature on the crisis, e.g. Lo, a number of papers that specifically focus on housing and mortgage markets, and some very recent work about agent based modeling and complexity theory presented at the 2012 ARES meetings.

The conclusion suggests a number of ways in which economists can combat the potential of black swan blindness is our search for extreme events. One suggestion is to combat the error of confirmation with ongoing testing. Combating overly simplistic narratives can also be addressed by listening more carefully to the criticisms by people outside the field. Pay more attention to silent evidence by having more substantial and ongoing consumer testing of new products, more work to identify best practices, and more resources to enforce lending laws. Finally, more attention needs to be focused upon assumptions in the models that are based upon limited empirical evidence and, if found later to be false, may lead to dire outcomes.

These include more and ongoing evaluation of stress tests. New rules to adjust capital requirements over the business cycle are consistent with the suggestions of the paper. Economists need to spend more time exploring and learning from outliers in the models.

The recent crisis has been driven by a wide variety of factors from within many sectors and agents. The outcome has been a major problem for people in many sectors and regions of the economy. The hope is that economists can do a better job in the future to help policymakers and others be more prepared for the potential of extreme events in the hopes of avoiding them in the future or at least reducing their likelihood and damage caused by them.

The paper draws upon a wide variety of literature to establish its main points. Central to it is a review of an issue on which the author had substantial experience – academic and professional – and that also played a major role in the crisis – inadequate capital for an extreme downturn in house prices.

This study aims to examine the impact of lending liquidity on house prices especially during black swan events such as the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08 and COVID-19. Homeownership is an important goal for many, and house prices are a significant driver of household wealth and the wider economy. This study argues that excessive liquidity from central banks may be driving house price increases, despite negative changes to fundamental drivers. This study contributes to the literature by examining lending liquidity as a driver of house prices and evaluating the efficacy of fiscal policies aimed at boosting liquidity during black swan events.

This study aims to examine the impact of quantitative easing on Australian house prices during back swan events using data from 2004 to 2021. All macroeconomic and financial data are freely available from official sources such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the nation's Central Bank. Methodology wise, given the problematic nature of the data such as a mixed order of integration and the possibility of cointegration among some of the I(1) variables, the auto-regressive distributed lag model was selected given its flexibility and relative lack of assumptions.

The Australian housing market continued to perform well during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the house price index reaching an unprecedented high towards the end of 2021. Research using data from 2004 to 2021 found a consistent positive relationship between house prices and housing finance, as well as population growth and the value of work commenced on residential properties. Other traditional drivers such as the unemployment rate, economic activity, stock prices and income levels were found to be less significant. This study suggests that quantitative easing implemented during the pandemic played a significant role in the housing market's performance.

Given the severity of COVID-19, policymakers have responded with fiscal and monetary measures that are unprecedented in scale and scope. The full implications of these responses are yet to be completely understood. In Australia, the policy interest rate was reduced to a historic low of 0.1%. In the following periods house prices appreciated by over 20%. The efficacy of quantitative easing and associated fiscal policies aimed at boosting liquidity to mitigate the impact of black swan events such as the pandemic has yet to be tested empirically. This study aims to address that paucity in literature by providing such evidence.

Despite the common focus on studying future events, the study of risk management and foresight have developed as two segmented scientific fields. This study aims to investigate whether current risk management methodology is sufficient for long-term planning against threats from terrorism and other black swan events, and whether perspectives from foresight studies can contribute to more effective long-term security planning.

This study investigates the planning process of the rebuilding of the Norwegian Government Complex destroyed during a terrorist attack in 2011. The study examines whether security risk managers find current security risk management methodology sufficient for dealing with long-term security threats to the Norwegian Government Complex.

Current security risk management methodology for long-term security planning is insufficient to capture black swan events. Foresight perspectives could contribute by engaging tools to mitigate the risk of these events. This could lead to more robust security planning.

The main contribution of this paper is to investigate whether perspectives and methodology from foresight studies can improve current security risk management methodology for long-term planning and look for cross-fertilization between foresight and risk studies. A framework for scenario development based on security risk management methodology and foresight methodology is proposed that can help bridge the gap.

All of us seek truth via objective inquiry into various human and nonhuman phenomena that nature presents to us on a daily basis. We are empirical (or nonempirical) decision makers who hold that uncertainty is our discipline, and that understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit (Karl Popper, as cited in Taleb, 2010, p. 57). We verify (prove something as right) or falsify (prove something as wrong), and this asymmetry of knowledge enables us to distinguish between science and nonscience. According to Karl Popper (1971), we should be an “open society,” one that relies on skepticism as a modus operandi, refusing and resisting definitive (dogmatic) truths. An open society, maintained Popper, is one in which no permanent truth is held to exist; this would allow counter-ideas to emerge. Hence, any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed since it chokes its own refutations. A good model for society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian and epistemologically arrogant. The difference between an open and a closed society is that between an open and a closed mind (Taleb, 2004, p. 129). Popper accused Plato of closing our minds. Popper's idea was that science has problems of fallibility or falsifiability. In this chapter, we deal with fallibility and falsifiability of human thinking, reasoning, and inferencing as argued by various scholars, as well as the falsifiability of our knowledge and cherished cultures and traditions. Critical thinking helps us cope with both vulnerabilities. In general, we argue for supporting the theory of “open mind and open society” in order to pursue objective truth.

This chapter addresses one of the most crucial areas for critical thinking: the morality of turbulent markets around the world. All of us are overwhelmed by such turbulent markets. Following Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2004, 2010), we distinguish between nonscalable industries (ordinary professions where income grows linearly, piecemeal or by marginal jumps) and scalable industries (extraordinary risk-prone professions where income grows in a nonlinear fashion, and by exponential jumps and fractures). Nonscalable industries generate tame and predictable markets of goods and services, while scalable industries regularly explode into behemoth virulent markets where rewards are disproportionately large compared to effort, and they are the major causes of turbulent financial markets that rock our world causing ever-widening inequities and inequalities. Part I describes both scalable and nonscalable markets in sufficient detail, including propensity of scalable industries to randomness, and the turbulent markets they create. Part II seeks understanding of moral responsibility of turbulent markets and discusses who should appropriate moral responsibility for turbulent markets and under what conditions. Part III synthesizes various theories of necessary and sufficient conditions for accepting or assigning moral responsibility. We also analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for attribution of moral responsibility such as rationality, intentionality, autonomy or freedom, causality, accountability, and avoidability of various actors as moral agents or as moral persons. By grouping these conditions, we then derive some useful models for assigning moral responsibility to various entities such as individual executives, corporations, or joint bodies. We discuss the challenges and limitations of such models.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of research into the causes of counterfeit parts entering into the military parts supply chain in the USA.

The approach included tracking of a part through the supply chain, surveys of counterfeit incidences, researching a number of reports and articles written on the subject. There were also areas addressed based on personal experiences.

Superficial magazine and blog articles emphasize the apparent problem based on the geographic source of counterfeit electronics. The research conducted by the authors shows that while problems exist on the supply side, it is the management of the material at the purchase end where the best control is possible and most realistic to be implemented.

Issues related to the creation, disposal, and re‐use of electronics waste have not been evaluated in this article. Access to the decision makers at the component management level at prime contractors has also been limited.

The paper discusses observations of how the “black swan” effect has moved into the electronics supply chain due to actions that were made without knowing what the effects of the unknown could cause. The conclusion addresses how these effects could have been avoided in many cases if the laws of cause and effect had been considered in the decision making.