Peter L. Bernstein on Risk

In this rare interview conducted by McKinsey & Company back in early 2008, Peter L. Bernstein, an expert on risk, explores the history of risk and how it works in real-world markets and in our lives.  He also explains why in the real world the most sophisticated mathematical models can sometimes fail. This interview is timeless and very relevant to current on-going global financial crisis.

Source: McKinsey & Company

Who is Peter L. Bernstein?

Peter L. Bernstein (born January 22, 1919) is an American author, economist, and educator.

Bernstein is most famously known as the author of ten books in economics and finance and countless articles in professional journals such as The Harvard Business Review and the Financial Analysts Journal, and in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Worth magazine, and Bloomberg publications. He has contributed to collections of articles published by Perseus and FT Mastering, among others.

Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, was published by John Wiley & Sons in September 1996. This book won the Edwin G. Booz Prize for the most insightful, innovative management book published in 1996. In 1998, it was awarded the Clarence Arthur Kelp / Elizur Wright Memorial Award from The American Risk and Insurance Association (ARIA) as an outstanding original contribution to the literature of risk and insurance. The book has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.

In 1992 Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street was published by The Free Press in Canada and Maxwell Macmillan Internationaland in USA since become a worldwide guide to modern investment theories and practices. Capital Ideas Evolving, the follow-up to this seminal work, was published in May 2007 by John Wiley and Sons.

Streetwise: The Best of The Journal of Portfolio Management, edited by Peter L. Bernstein and Frank J. Fabozzi, was published in 1997 by Princeton University Press:

Earlier books include A Primer on Money, Banking and Gold (Random House 1965), as well as Economist on Wall Street (Macmillan 1970), and The Price of Prosperity (Doubleday, 1962), in addition to two books on government finance co-authored with Robert Heilbroner.

Bernstein’s other books are The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession, published in the fall of 2000 by John Wiley and Sons, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, published in 2005 by W.W. Norton & Co.

Source: Wikipedia