17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lumpy Porridge, February 20, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk (Hardcover)
I found this book to be very uneven. Obviously, the book focuses on the concept of "Regret" - the negative effect (and feelings) that accompany a decision that goes bad. The authors claim there are four main elements to risk management:
1. A time horizon (agreed)
2. Scenarios (OK)
3. Risk Measure (see comment below)
4. Benchmarks (how are these set other than arbitrarily?)
As one would expect, they do give good treatment to the theory of regret and also touch upon, albeit uncritically, Kahneman and Tversky's theories on framing. (Nice theory, but ought to be challenged more than it is) They also touch upon some other
interesting areas, but otherwise I found this book to be fairly thin gruel.
There are a few flashes here and there - for example, a mordant expose (p. 86) of how the market, which is supposed to be so rational, (i.e. so knowledgeable) actually depends on the ignorance and foolishness of buyers!
The upside of this book (pardon the pun):
The authors conclude that risk is "an extremely subtle and complex idea, full of fascinating byways and confusing cul-de-sacs." I think they are right on that call and those of us who use a more narrowly circumscribed definitions of risk are wrong. They also call insurance what it really is: risk sharing, not risk transfer as it is usually, and IMHO, incorrectly called. They also have a healthy skepticism for a number of performance measurement criteria, noting how they can induce dysfunctional behaviour. (See Alfie Kuhn's "Punished by Rewards" for an unabashed treatment of this topic)
The regret (groan - I bought my copy): The book makes dubious claims that regret has been neglected in risk management. The authors obviously do not read the same risk management books as I do. The book has an index but lacks references: the only footnote in the book was one of the author's! There are factual errors -ones so simple to check they raise other questions for instance, NAFTA was signed on 17 December 1992 by outgoing President Bush, not in 1993 by President Clinton, as claimed by the authors (p. 15). They make ill-informed and unrealistic statements about ValuJet and several of their examples border on the absurd.
I think the authors are also careless with some of their thoughts - scenarios are not "observations about the state of the world at some predetermined future time" That is an impossibility. They may be constructs, assumptions, hypotheses, forecasts, etc., but NOT observations! This may seem like nit-picking, but there are too many examples to let this pass by,
and they becomes increasingly bothersome - and the credibility of the book suffers at the same time.
In arguing that risk is in the future, the authors overlook the latency of risk factors. This error is further compounded by the authors continually referring to "measuring risk." If risk lies in the future and the future is uncertain, then we cannot "measure" risk, only estimate it.
There are some delicious ironies in this book: (1) The authors perplexingly highlight the risks of using formula, but offer nothing in its place but other formula. (2) Although purportedly quantitative, it hinges on regret - which the authors acknowledge is a subjective feeling - and the construction of equally subjective benchmarks and scenarios. It confirms a long held personal view of mine that those who find themselves at the extreme ends of the "qual" or "quant" spectrum, are actually kissing cousins! I prefer to be somewhere in the middle - an extreme moderate, as it were.(;-)) (3) The authors hold J.P. Morgan, out to be something of a clairvoyant with risk - even having developed its own software "RiskMetrics" to do so. However, those familiar with the Enron debacle will know that JP Morgan is highly exposed as one of Enron's two bankers (Citcorp being the other)
In sum, this book may be useful for explaining financial risk to non-financial risk managers, but I have to confess some disappointment with it as regards general risk management.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Rules of Risk, ......(aka Seeing Tomorrow), January 25, 2001
Help!....I just rushed my money to the Rules of Risk by Ron S. Dembo and Andrew Freeman and there is one major flaw here.........It is a complete rewrite to the word of the book by the same authors called Seeing Tomorrow.......Line for line, word for word, chapter for chapter...........The Seeing Tommorrow was written in Canada in ISBN 07710-2612-9 and printed by MdcClelland And Steward in 1998........Now in big fanfare they bring back the same damn book with a different title........HELLO.......AM I MISSING SOMETHING.......2.... Imagine you have read the best book on investment strategy you have ever read in your life called Seeing Tomorrow.....so naturally when you see that the same two brilliant authors have teamed up again you cannot rush your money to the Amazon people fast enough.......then the big day comes and guess what........deja view all over again....3.....It would be much fairer to any reader to know that this is the newer paperback version of the older book.........the book is brilliant, but this is unacceptable confusion.........thank you......
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
For all the praise on the bookjacket, I was underwhelmed., July 17, 1998
This review is from: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk (Hardcover)
I guess Dembo's concept of regret applies here. After reading glowing comments by Peter Bernstein and Steve Ross, I was really excited to read the book. I finished it wanting more.
The book does make some very good conceptual points - specifically that risk management should be forward looking and not backward looking. But the hype for REGRET is overblown. After bashing economic theory, the authors present Expected Upside Value - constant*(Maximum probable loss) as a decision metric. Hmmmm, let's see, if the constant is greater than one this is essentially a simplified utility function. Smells like economic decision theory to me....
For the mathematically inclined, the book is a quick read and worth a quick look. For the non-mathematical manager the concepts are definitely worth reading and thinking about. Nothing earth-shattering, but better than most.
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