Book notes: Connectedness and contagion, by Hal Scott

Hal S Scott, Connectedness and contagion: protecting the financial system from panics, The MIT Press, 2016, 416 pages

It is still early days to be drawing lessons from the economic and financial crises of 2008–09. But people do, and policy-makers must. In his detailed new book, Hal Scott, eminent Harvard Law School professor and director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, argues that legislators and regulators in the US have drawn the wrong lessons.

Scott begins by distinguishing be