Crises in economic complex networks: Black Swans or Dragon Kings?

Abstract

After the global financial crisis of 2008, the literature paid new attention to economic crises, analysing them according to a network perspective. Assuming this perspective, this paper is aimed at offering an overview of the functioning of the global economy as a complex network, characterized by cascading failures when an extreme event (EE) occurs, and showing that the economic crisis of 2008 was an extreme event with well-identified features and consequently was forecastable.