Butterfly Defect

The Butterfly Defect addresses the widening gap between the new systemic risks generated by globalization and their effective management. It shows how the dynamics of turbo-charged globalization has the potential and power to destabilize our societies. Drawing on the latest insights from a wide variety of disciplines, Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan provide practical guidance for how governments, businesses, and individuals can better manage globalization and risk. Goldin and Mariathasan demonstrate that systemic risk issues are now endemic everywhere--in supply chains, pandemics, infrastructure, ecology and climate change, economics, and politics. Unless we address these concerns, they will lead to greater protectionism, xenophobia, nationalism, and, inevitably, deglobalization, rising inequality, conflict, and slower growth. The Butterfly Defect shows that mitigating uncertainty and risk in an interconnected world is an essential task for our future.

Finalist for the 2015 Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize "[The authors demonstrate] that the increasing interconnectedness of the world makes the world's economics, infrastructure, health and social conditions behave [as] an interconnected meteorological system. The next big crisis will be of unexpected origin."--Professor Rober J. Shiller, Wall Street Journal "This is an important and thought-provoking book."--Shawn Donnan, Financial Times "This book covers many different sectors and points out that globalization brings opportunities as well as threats; readers from diverse professional and academic backgrounds will gain insights."--Library Journal "The arguments put forward are cohesive and coherent with well-constructed logical chapters, good, well thought out examples and jargon free language... Upon reflection of this book, I was left with a clear and defined picture of how systemic risk effects systems and how globalization inherently increases these risks."--Jason Paul Stansbie, Leonardo Reviews "Although the authors' prose is clear and unburdened by jargon, the nature of the topic means this is not a light read. But it will reward the persistent. The issues they raise, and the interconnections they identify, are such that specialists will come away with a deeper understanding of the risks involved in each of the specific fields they cover... To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, this book should be widely read not because it is easy, but because it is hard."--Survival Global Politics and Strategy "In this context of uncertainty about the future of globalization, the book is a very timely intervention, as it focuses exactly on the risks created by the process of globalization itself. The authors have formidable expertise."--Dariusz Wojcik, Journal of Economic Geography "A timely addition to the nascent literature on CT-inspired methods and models... Bound to trigger debate and invite (if not beckon) its readers to pursue further the ideas discussed on its pages."--Emilian Kavalski, Political Studies Review

Ian Goldin is director of the Oxford Martin School and professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford. Mike Mariathasan is assistant professor of finance at KU Leuven.