The Johansen-Ledoit-Sornette (JLS) model of rational expectation bubbles with finite-time singular crash hazard rates has been developed to describe the dynamics of financial bubbles and crashes. It has been applied successfully to a large variety of financial bubbles in many different markets....

Extreme events are ubiquitous in nature and social society, including natural disasters, accident disasters, crises in public health (such as Ebola and the COVID-19 pandemic), and social security incidents (wars, conflicts, and social unrest). These extreme events will heavily impact financial...

Using the mechanics of creep in material sciences as a metaphor, we present a general framework to understand the evolution of financial, economic and social systems and to construct scenarios for the future. In a nutshell, highly non-linear out-of-equilibrium systems subjected to exogenous...

Financial bubbles are subject to debate and controversy. However, they are not well understood and are hardly ever characterised specifically, especially ex ante. We define a bubble as a period of unsustainable growth, when the price of an asset increases ever more quickly, in a series of...

We inspect the price volatility before, during, and after financial asset bubbles in order to uncover possible commonalities and check empirically whether volatility might be used as an indicator or an early warning signal of an unsustainable price increase and the associated crash. Some...

We live in a ‘zero-risk society', characterized by a culture that is obsessed with controlling and removing any possible risks. Obviously, one of the fundamental objectives of any civilization is to improve the safety and security of its citizens. However, we should not let the cozy comfort...

We present an extension of the Johansen-Ledoit-Sornette (JLS) model to include an additional pricing factor called the "Zipf factor'', which describes the diversification risk of the stock market portfolio. Keeping all the dynamical characteristics of a bubble described in the JLS model, the new...

We introduce the concept of “negative bubbles” as the mirror image of standard financial bubbles, in which positive feedback mechanisms may lead to transient accelerating price falls. To model these negative bubbles, we adapt the Johansen-Ledoit-Sornette (JLS) model of rational expectation...

We present the symmetric thermal optimal path (TOPS) method to determine the time-dependent lead-lag relationship between two stochastic time series. This novel version of the previously introduced TOP method alleviates some inconsistencies by imposing that the lead-lag relationship should be...