220: Allison Schrager | Risk Mitigation With Examples In “An Economist Walks Into A Brothel”

Understanding risk is an economic way to understand the decisions and systems in our communities and finances. Economist Allison Schrager looks at risk in fields at the more extreme ends of the spectrum, to understand it with less noise in place.

Professor Allison Schrager teaches at NYU, and has a PhD in Economics from Columbia University, with her Bachelors from the University of Edinburgh. She is an economist, journalist at Quartz, and cofounder of LifeCycle Finance Partners, LLC. She has contributed to The Economist, Reuters, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Show notes:

• what sex work can teach about risk management, and how Allison looked at a specific brothel to understand the value proposition
• where in life you have your risks managed, whereas you have them completely ignored in other categories
• when to take a risk and when to lean towards the safer option
• why you should define what risk and reward mean to you, so that you can take and seek levels complementary to your nature
• how to include your human irrationality into your risk modeling
• what it takes to get the most bang for your buck in the department of risk-taking
• how hedging and insurance are methods used to master your domain
• what you can expect in your assessments, and what type of room you need to leave for unanticipated events
• where the perspective of the world has gone, in terms of having control of the world you live in

I was glad to have Professor Schrager on episode 220. You can check out her articles on Quartz, home page, or her book on Amazon.