"When the crisis came, the serious limitations of existing economic and financial models immediately became apparent." "There is also a strong belief, which I share, that bad or oversimplistic and overconfident economics helped create the crisis."
''Kada je kriza stigla, ozbiljna ograničenja postojeće ekonomije i finansijskih modela ubrzo su postala očigledna.'' "Takođe postoji jako ubeđenje, koje i ja delim da su loše ili prejednostavne i samosvesne ekonomije pomogle stvaranje krize.''
Now, you've probably all heard of similar criticism coming from people who are skeptical of capitalism. But this is different. This is coming from the heart of finance. The first quote is from Jean-Claude Trichet when he was governor of the European Central Bank. The second quote is from the head of the UK Financial Services Authority. Are these people implying that we don't understand the economic systems that drive our modern societies? It gets worse. "We spend billions of dollars trying to understand the origins of the universe, while we still don't understand the conditions for a stable society, a functioning economy, or peace."
Sada, verovatno ste svi čuli za slične kritike koje dolaze od ljudi koji su skeptični zbog kapitalizma. Ali ovo je drugačije. Ovo potiče iz srca finansija. Prvi citat je Žan-Klod Trišea kada je bio guverner Evropske centralne banke Drugi citat je iz glave upravnika Finansijskih usluga Ujedinjenog Kraljevstva. Da li zapravo ovi ljudi nagoveštavaju da mi ne razumemo ekonomske sisteme koji upravljaju modernim društvima? Postaje još gore. ''Mi trošimo milijarde dolara pokušavajući da razumemo poreklo univerzuma dok još uvek ne razumemo ni uslove za stabilno društvo, za funkcionalnu ekonomiju ili za mir.''
What's happening here? How can this be possible? Do we really understand more about the fabric of reality than we do about the fabric which emerges from our human interactions? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. But there's an intriguing solution which is coming from what is known as the science of complexity.
Šta se ovde dešava? Da li je ovo moguće? Da li zaista razumemo više o materijalu stvarnosti nego što razumemo materijal koji nastaje iz naših ljudskih interakcija? Nažalost, odgovor je da. Ali postoji intrigantno rešenje koje potiče od onoga što je poznato kao nauka složenosti.
To explain what this means and what this thing is, please let me quickly take a couple of steps back. I ended up in physics by accident. It was a random encounter when I was young, and since then, I've often wondered about the amazing success of physics in describing the reality we wake up in every day. In a nutshell, you can think of physics as follows. So you take a chunk of reality you want to understand and you translate it into mathematics. You encode it into equations. Then, predictions can be made and tested. We're actually really lucky that this works, because no one really knows why the thoughts in our heads should actually relate to the fundamental workings of the universe. Despite the success, physics has its limits. As Dirk Helbing pointed out in the last quote, we don't really understand the complexity that relates to us, that surrounds us. This paradox is what got me interested in complex systems. So these are systems which are made up of many interconnected or interacting parts: swarms of birds or fish, ant colonies, ecosystems, brains, financial markets. These are just a few examples.
Da bi se objasnilo šta ovo znači i šta zapravo ovo jeste, molim vas, dopustite mi da se za čas vratim nekoliko koraka unazad. Igrom slučaja završio sam u fizici. To je bio slučajan susret kada sam bio mlad, i od tada, često sam se pitao o neverovatnom uspehu fizike prilikom opisivanja stvarnosti u kojoj se budimo svakog dana. U suštini, možete razmišljati o fizici na sledeći način. Uzmete komad stvarnosti koju želite da razumete i to onda prevodite u matematiku. Kodirate ga u jednačine. Tada se predviđanja mogu obaviti i testirati. Mi smo zapravo veoma srećni što ovo radi, zbog toga što niko zaista ne zna zašto bi misli u našim glavama trebalo zapravo da imaju veze sa fundamentalnim radom univerzuma. Uprkos uspehu, fizika ima svoja ograničenja. Kao što je Dirk Helbing naglasio u poslednjem citatu, mi ne shvatamo istinski složenost koja ima veze s nama, koja nas okružuje. Ovaj paradoks me je zainteresovao za kompleksne sisteme. Dakle, ovo su sistemi koji su stvoreni od više međusobno povezanih ili interaktivnih delova: najezde ptica ili riba, kolonije mrava, ekosistemi, mozgovi, finansijska tržišta. Ovo je samo nekoliko primera.
Interestingly, complex systems are very hard to map into mathematical equations, so the usual physics approach doesn't really work here. So what do we know about complex systems? Well, it turns out that what looks like complex behavior from the outside is actually the result of a few simple rules of interaction. This means you can forget about the equations and just start to understand the system by looking at the interactions, so you can actually forget about the equations and you just start to look at the interactions. And it gets even better, because most complex systems have this amazing property called emergence. So this means that the system as a whole suddenly starts to show a behavior which cannot be understood or predicted by looking at the components of the system. So the whole is literally more than the sum of its parts. And all of this also means that you can forget about the individual parts of the system, how complex they are. So if it's a cell or a termite or a bird, you just focus on the rules of interaction.
Zanimljivo, složeni sistemi su veoma teški za mapiranje u matematičke jednačine, tako da uobičajeni fizički pristup ovde baš i ne funkcioniše. Pa šta mi znamo o složenim sistemima? Pa, ispostavlja se da ono što izgleda kao složeno ponašanje spolja je zapravo rezultat nekoliko jednostavnih pravila interakcije. Ovo znači da možete zaboraviti na jednačine i početi samo da razumete sistem posmatrajući interakcije, pa možete zapravo zaboraviti jednačine i početi samo da posmatrate interakcije. I čak postaje bolje, jer većina složenih sistema poseduje to neverovatno svojstvo koje se zove ispoljavanje. Tako da ovo znači da sistem kao celina iznenada počinje da pokazuje ponašanje koje ne može biti razumljivo ili predviđeno posmatranjem delova sistema. Dakle celina je bukvalno više od zbira njenih delova. I sve ovo takođe znači da možete zaboraviti pojedinačne delove sistema, koliko su oni složeni. I ako je to ćelija ili termit ili ptica, samo se fokusirate na pravila o interakciji.
As a result, networks are ideal representations of complex systems. The nodes in the network are the system's components, and the links are given by the interactions. So what equations are for physics, complex networks are for the study of complex systems.
Kao rezultat, mreže su idealan pokazatelj složenih sistema. Čvorovi u mreži su komponente sistema i veze su date interakcijama. Dakle ono što su jednačine za fiziku, to su složene mreže za učenje složenih sistema.
This approach has been very successfully applied to many complex systems in physics, biology, computer science, the social sciences, but what about economics? Where are economic networks? This is a surprising and prominent gap in the literature. The study we published last year, called "The Network of Global Corporate Control," was the first extensive analysis of economic networks. The study went viral on the Internet and it attracted a lot of attention from the international media. This is quite remarkable, because, again, why did no one look at this before? Similar data has been around for quite some time.
Ovaj pristup je bio veoma uspešno primenjen na mnogim složenim sistemima u fizici, biologiji, kompjuterskim naukama, socijalnim naukama, ali šta je sa ekonomijom? Gde su ekonomske mreže? Ovo je iznenađujuć i značajan jaz u literaturi. Istraživanje koje smo objavili prošle godine, pod nazivom ''Mreža globalne korporativne kontrole'', bilo je prva obimna analiza ekonomskih mreža. Studija je bila dostupna na internetu i privukla je mnogo pažnje internacionalnih medija. Ovo je prilično izvanredno, zato što, opet, zašto niko nije pogledao ovo ranije?
What we looked at in detail was ownership networks.
Slični podaci su bili tu duže vreme.
So here the nodes are companies, people, governments, foundations, etc. And the links represent the shareholding relations, so shareholder A has x percent of the shares in company B. And we also assign a value to the company given by the operating revenue. So ownership networks reveal the patterns of shareholding relations. In this little example, you can see a few financial institutions with some of the many links highlighted.
Ono što smo detaljno posmatrali bile su vlasničke mreže. Dakle ovde su čvorovi kompanije, ljudi, vlade fondacije, itd. I veze predstavljaju akcionarske odnose, tako da akcionar A ima x procenata deonica u kompaniji B. I mi takođe dodeljujemo vrednost kompaniji datu putem operativnog prihoda. Dakle vlasničke mreže otkrivaju obrasce akcionarskih veza. U ovom malu primeru, možete videti nekoliko finansijskih institucija sa nekim od mnoštva istaknutih veza.
Now, you may think that no one looked at this before because ownership networks are really, really boring to study. Well, as ownership is related to control, as I shall explain later, looking at ownership networks actually can give you answers to questions like, who are the key players? How are they organized? Are they isolated? Are they interconnected? And what is the overall distribution of control? In other words, who controls the world? I think this is an interesting question.
E sad, možete pomisliti da niko nije razmišljao o ovome ranije zbog toga što su vlasničke mreže veoma, veoma dosadne za proučavanje. Dakle, kako je vlasništvo vezano za kontrolu, kao što ću objasniti kasnije, gledajući na vlasništva mreža zapravo vam mogu dati odgovore na pitanja kao što su, ko su glavni igrači? Kako su oni organizovani? Jesu li izolovani? Jesu li međusobno povezani? I šta je ukupna raspodela kontrole? Drugim rečima, ko kontroliše svet? Mislim da je ovo zanimljivo pitanje.
And it has implications for systemic risk. This is a measure of how vulnerable a system is overall. A high degree of interconnectivity can be bad for stability, because then the stress can spread through the system like an epidemic.
I ima posledice za sistemski rizik. Ovo je mera za to koliko je ranjiv sistem u celini. Visok stepen međusobnog povezivanja može biti loš za stabilnost, jer se onda stres može širiti kroz sistem, kao epidemija.
Scientists have sometimes criticized economists who believe ideas and concepts are more important than empirical data, because a foundational guideline in science is: Let the data speak. OK. Let's do that.
Naučnici su ponekad kritikovali ekonomiste koji veruju da su ideje i koncepti važniji od empirijskih podataka, jer je temeljna smernica u nauci: Pustimo podatke da govore. Ok. Uradimo to.
So we started with a database containing 13 million ownership relations from 2007. This is a lot of data, and because we wanted to find out "who rules the world," we decided to focus on transnational corporations, or "TNCs," for short. These are companies that operate in more than one country, and we found 43,000. In the next step, we built the network around these companies, so we took all the TNCs' shareholders, and the shareholders' shareholders, etc., all the way upstream, and we did the same downstream, and ended up with a network containing 600,000 nodes and one million links. This is the TNC network which we analyzed.
Tako smo počeli sa bazom podataka koja sadrži 13 miliona vlasničkih odnosa od 2007. Ovo je mnogo podataka i zbog toga što smo želeli otkriti, ko vlada svetom, odlučili smo da se fokusiramo na transnacionalne korporacije ili skraćeno TNC. Ovo su kompanije koje posluju u više od jedne države, i mi smo ih našli 43.000. U sledećem koraku, izgradili smo mrežu oko ovih kompanija, tako da smo uzeli TNC-ove akcionare, i akcionarske akcionare itd., sve uzvodno i uradili smo isto nizvodno i završilo se mrežom koja sadrži 600.000 čvorova i milion veza. Ovo je TNC-ova mreža koju smo analizirali.
And it turns out to be structured as follows. So you have a periphery and a center which contains about 75 percent of all the players, and in the center, there's this tiny but dominant core which is made up of highly interconnected companies. To give you a better picture, think about a metropolitan area. So you have the suburbs and the periphery, you have a center, like a financial district, then the core will be something like the tallest high-rise building in the center. And we already see signs of organization going on here. 36 percent of the TNCs are in the core only, but they make up 95 percent of the total operating revenue of all TNCs.
I ispostavlja se da je struktuirana na sledeći način. Dakle, imate periferiju i centar koji sadrže oko 75 procenata svih igrača i u centru se nalazi ovo malo ali dominantno jezgro koje je napravljeno od snažno povezanih kompanija. Da biste dobili jasniju sliku, razmislite o području jedne metropole. Dakle imate predgrađa i periferiju, imate centar kao finansijsku oblast, onda bi jezgro bilo nešto kao najviša zgrada u centru. I već vidimo znake organizacije koja se ovde dešava. Trideset šest procenata TNC-ova su samo u srži, ali oni čine 95 procenata ukupnog operativnog prihoda celog TNC-a.
OK, so now we analyzed the structure, so how does this relate to the control? Well, ownership gives voting rights to shareholders. This is the normal notion of control. And there are different models which allow you to compute the control you get from ownership. If you have more than 50 percent of the shares in a company, you get control, but usually, it depends on the relative distribution of shares. And the network really matters. About 10 years ago, Mr. Tronchetti Provera had ownership and control in a small company, which had ownership and control in a bigger company. You get the idea. This ended up giving him control in Telecom Italia with a leverage of 26. So this means that, with each euro he invested, he was able to move 26 euros of market value through the chain of ownership relations.
U redu, sada smo analizirali strukturu, kako se onda ovo odnosi na kontrolu? Dakle, vlasništvo daje pravo glasa akcionarima. Ovo je normalna predstava kontrole. I takođe postoje različiti modeli koji vam dozvoljavaju da računate kontrolu koju dobijate od vlasništva. Ako imate više od 50 procenata akcija u kompaniji, dobijate i kontrolu, ali najčešće to zavisi od relativne raspodele akcija. I mreža je zaista bitna. Pre oko 10 godina, g-din Tronketi Provera je posedovao i kontrolisao malu kompaniju, koja je posedovala i kontrolisala veću kompaniju. Shvatate ideju. Ovo se završilo dajući mu kontrolu u italijanskom telekomu sa leveridžom od 26. Tako da ovo znači da, sa svakim eurom koji je uložio, on je bio u stanju da pomera 26 eura tržišne vrednosti kroz lanac vlasničkih odnosa.
Now what we actually computed in our study was the control over the TNCs' value. This allowed us to assign a degree of influence to each shareholder. This is very much in the sense of Max Weber's idea of potential power, which is the probability of imposing one's own will despite the opposition of others.
Ono što smo zapravo izračunali u našoj studiji jeste kontrola preko TNC-ove vrednosti. Ovo nam je omogućilo da odredimo stepen uticaja na svakom akcionaru. Ovo je veoma mnogo u smislu ideje Maksa Vebera o potencijalnoj moći, koja je verovatnoća nametanja volje pojedinca uprkos otporu ostalih.
If you want to compute the flow in an ownership network, this is what you have to do. It's actually not that hard to understand. Let me explain by giving you this analogy. So think about water flowing in pipes, where the pipes have different thickness. So similarly, the control is flowing in the ownership networks and is accumulating at the nodes. So what did we find after computing all this network control? Well, it turns out that the 737 top shareholders have the potential to collectively control 80 percent of the TNCs' value. Now remember, we started out with 600,000 nodes, so these 737 top players make up a bit more than 0.1 percent. They're mostly financial institutions in the US and the UK. And it gets even more extreme. There are 146 top players in the core, and they together have the potential to collectively control 40 percent of the TNCs' value.
Ako želite da izračunate protok u vlasničkoj mreži, evo šta treba da uradite. To zapravo nije toliko teško za razumevanje. Dozvolite da vam objasnim kroz ovo poređenje. Dakle pomislite o protoku vode kroz cevi gde su cevi različite debljine. Slično tome, kontrola teče u vlasničkim mrežama i sakuplja se u čvorovima. Dakle šta smo pronašli nakon obračunavanja sve ove mrežne kontrole? Pa, ispostavlja se da 737 najvećih akcionara ima potencijal da kolektivno upravlja sa 80 procenata TNC-ove vrednosti. Sada zapamtite, započeli smo sa 600.000 čvorova, tako da ovih 737 najvećih igrača čini malo više od 0,1 procenta. To su uglavnom finansijske institucije u SAD i Ujedinjenom Kraljevstvu. I sve ovo postaje ekstremnije. Ima 146 najboljih igrača u središtu i oni zajedno imaju mogućnost da zajednički upravljaju sa 40 procenata TNC-ove vrednosti.
What should you take home from all of this? Well, the high degree of control you saw is very extreme by any standard. The high degree of interconnectivity of the top players in the core could pose a significant systemic risk to the global economy. And we could easily reproduce the TNC network with a few simple rules. This means that its structure is probably the result of self-organization. It's an emergent property which depends on the rules of interaction in the system, so it's probably not the result of a top-down approach like a global conspiracy.
Šta bi trebalo da ponesete kući od svega ovoga? Pa, visok stepen kontrole koji ste videli je veoma ekstreman po svim standardima. Visok stepen međusobne povezanosti najboljih igrača u jezgru može predstavljati značajan sistemski rizik za globalnu ekonomiju i mogli bismo lako povratiti TNC mrežu uz nekoliko jednostavnih pravila. Ovo znači da su te strukture verovatno rezultat samoorganizovanja. Ovo je vanredno vlasništvo koje zavisi od pravila saradnje u sistemu, tako da verovatno nije rezultat pristupa od vrha na dole kao globalne zavere.
Our study "is an impression of the moon's surface. It's not a street map." So you should take the exact numbers in our study with a grain of salt, yet it "gave us a tantalizing glimpse of a brave new world of finance." We hope to have opened the door for more such research in this direction, so the remaining unknown terrain will be charted in the future. And this is slowly starting. We're seeing the emergence of long-term and highly-funded programs which aim at understanding our networked world from a complexity point of view. But this journey has only just begun, so we will have to wait before we see the first results.
Naša studija ''je utisak površine meseca. To nije ulična mapa.'' Tako da bi trebalo da uzmete tačan broj u našoj studiji sa rezervom, ipak, on ''nam daje mučan pregled vrlog novog sveta finansija.'' Nadamo se da smo otvorili vrata za više istraživanja u ovom pravcu pa će preostali nepoznat teren biti ucrtan u budućnosti. I ovo polako uzima maha. Mi vidimo hitnost dugoročnih i dobro finansiranih programa čiji cilj je razumevanje našeg umreženog sveta s tačke gledišta složenosti. Ali ovo je putovanje upravo počelo, pa ćemo morati da čekamo pre nego vidimo prve rezultate.
Now there is still a big problem, in my opinion. Ideas relating to finance, economics, politics, society, are very often tainted by people's personal ideologies. I really hope that this complexity perspective allows for some common ground to be found. It would be really great if it has the power to help end the gridlock created by conflicting ideas, which appears to be paralyzing our globalized world. Reality is so complex, we need to move away from dogma. But this is just my own personal ideology.
Postoji još uvek veliki problem, po mom mišljenju. Ideje u vezi sa finansijama, ekonomijom, politikom, društvom, su veoma često ukaljane ličnim ljudskim ideologijama. Zaista se nadam da ova perspektiva složenosti omogućava pronalazak neke zajedničke osnove. Bilo bi stvarno odlično ako bi imala moć da pomogne prekid zastoja nastao suprotstavljanjem ideja, koji izgleda paralizuje naš globalizovani svet. Stvarnost je veoma složena, moramo se izmaći od dogmi. Ali ovo je samo moja lična ideologija.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)