title: Anticipating Economic Market Crises Using Measures of Collective Panic.
abstract: Predicting panic is of critical importance in many areas of human and animal behavior, notably in the context of economics. The recent financial crisis is a case in point. Panic may be due to a specific external threat or self-generated nervousness. Here we show that the recent economic crisis and earlier large single-day panics were preceded by extended periods of high levels of market mimicry--direct evidence of uncertainty and nervousness, and of the comparatively weak influence of external news. High levels of mimicry can be a quite general indicator of the potential for self-organized crises.
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Dion
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Harmon
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lagi
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, United States of America; Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Marcus A M
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: de Aguiar
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, United States of America; Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: David D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Chinellato
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, United States of America; University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Dartmouth, MA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Braha
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, United States of America; Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Irving R
authors.initials: IR
authors.lastname: Epstein
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Yaneer
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bar-Yam
mesh_terms: D057172:Economic Recession; D006801:Humans; D007449:Investments; D017059:Models, Econometric; D010200:Panic; D035501:Uncertainty