When tragedy strikes, how do people avoid bearing all of the costs of their loss? Learn more in the February 2017 issue of Page One Economics: Focus on Finance.

Insurance: Protecting Yourself from Damage is the sixth video in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis series, "No-Frills Money Skills." This episode begins with examples of activities with varying amounts of risk and introduces insurance, explaining how it is used to transfer or reduce risk. With a story about a homeowner, students learn several key insurance related concepts and terms. The content for these videos was reviewed by members of the Missouri Insurance Education Foundation.

This course explores perspectives in the policy process - agenda setting, problem definition, framing the terms of debate, formulation and analysis of options, implementation and evaluation of policy outcomes using frameworks including economics and markets, law, and business and management. Methods include cost/benefit analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and system dynamics. Exercises include developing skills to work on the interface between technology and societal issues; simulation exercises; case studies; and group projects that illustrate issues involving multiple stakeholders with different value structures, high levels of uncertainty, multiple levels of complexity; and value trade-offs that are characteristic of engineering systems. Emphasis on negotiation, team building and group dynamics, and management of multiple actors and leadership.

This course presents a challenging multi-dimensional perspective on the causes of human disease and mortality. The course focuses on analyses of major causes of mortality in the US since 1900: cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes, and infectious diseases. Students create analytical models to derive estimates for historically variant population risk factors and physiological rate parameters, and conduct analyses of familial data to separately estimate inherited and environmental risks. The course evaluates the basic population genetics of dominant, recessive and non-deleterious inherited risk factors.

FRED® (Federal Reserve Economic Data) provides access to a wide range of time-series data. Several of those series signal stress levels in financial markets and the probability of economic recession. This Special Edition of Page One Economics® describes indexes of financial and economic recession risk to new data users and can serve as a reference to advanced data users.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotic resistance is a growing threat to global public health. While antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) can arise in many different environments, environments with heavy antibiotic use, such as livestock farms and hospitals, are of particular concern. ARGs can then spread to human pathogens via horizontal gene transfer and the inhalation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria presents a particularly dangerous route of exposure. Thus, a recent study characterized the resistome found in the fine particulate matter from hospital air. The hospital airborne particulate samples had nearly twice the ARG abundance of ambient urban air samples, and up to 30% of the hospital microbiome was from human-associated sources, which highlights the risk of potentially resistant pathogens. The resistome varied with clinical activities; in particular the abundance of β-lactam ARGs was associated with the number of in-ward β-lactam resistant cases..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This course covers models of individual decision-making under certainty and uncertainty. Applications include risk sharing and financial markets; contracts and information economics; village economies and national development; models with money and credit; trade, spatial economics and differentiated commodities.

In the fifth episode of the No-Frills Money Skills Video Series, "Mutual Benefit," students learn what investment companies are and how mutual funds work. The video shows the difference between savings and investing and the importance of understanding risk versus reward.

Students will learn how the U.S. Census Bureau helps emergency responders provide support during natural disasters. Then, the teacher will set up various stations around the room to encourage peer-to-peer learning in small groups. Students will rotate from station to station, completing tasks such as creating an emergency preparedness kit, determining the states with the highest risk for hurricanes, and reviewing a series of photos of houses to determine which are most likely to survive a natural disaster.

This is a course in how corporations make use of the insights and tools of risk management. Most courses on derivatives, futures and options, and financial engineering are taught from the viewpoint of investment bankers and traders in the securities. This course is taught from the point of view of the manufacturing corporation, the utility, the software firm—any potential end-user of derivatives, but not the dealer. Most related courses focus on the extensive taxonomy of instruments and the complex models developed to price them, and on ways to exploit mispricing. While this course will make use of some of these pricing models, the focus is on how corporations use the insights and models to improve their operations, to increase the value of their real assets, or to create the financial flexibility necessary to implement their core strategy.

This course helps in developing skills as science communicators through projects and analysis of theoretical principles. Case studies explore the emergence of popular science communication over the past two centuries and consider the relationships among authors, audiences and media. Project topics are identified early in the term and students work with MIT Museum staff. Projects may include physical exhibits, practical demonstrations, or scripts for public programs.

This course covers interpretations of the concept of probability. Topics include basic probability rules; random variables and distribution functions; functions of random variables; and applications to quality control and the reliability assessment of mechanical/electrical components, as well as simple structures and redundant systems. The course also considers elements of statistics; Bayesian methods in engineering; methods for reliability and risk assessment of complex systems (event-tree and fault-tree analysis, common-cause failures, human reliability models); uncertainty propagation in complex systems (Monte Carlo methods, Latin Hypercube Sampling); and an introduction to Markov models. Examples and applications are drawn from nuclear and other industries, waste repositories, and mechanical systems.

Psychology and Economics (aka Behavioral Economics) is a growing subfield of economics that incorporates insights from psychology and other social sciences into economics. This course covers recent advances in behavioral economics by reviewing some of the assumptions made in mainstream economic models, and by discussing how human behavior systematically departs from these assumptions. Applications will cover a wide range of fields, including labor and public economics, industrial organization, health economics, finance, and development economics.

This course is an introduction to the most fundamental concepts, principles, analytical methods and tools useful for making investment and finance decisions regarding commercial real estate assets. As the first of a two-course sequence, this course will focus on the basic building blocks and the “micro” level, which pertains to individual properties and deals.

Risk analysis, assessment, and management is essential to any engineering field. This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of how to perform a comprehensive risk assessment applicable to a wide variety of engineering problems. The course will focus on failure mode and effect analysis, fault tree analysis, probabilistic risk analysis, and human reliability analysis. The course will also cover fundamental probability and statistics content.

This book covers a wide range of topics that involve the use of probability to solve problems in engineering design and research. Although it is relevant for a wide range of disciplines, it draws heavily on the fields of civil engineering, environmental engineering and the geosciences. Specific topics include risk analysis, probabilistic design, reliability-based design (component and system reliability). Future versions of this book will include additional applications of probability theory related to continuous distributions, extreme value analysis and expanded chapters on component and system reliability. A number of practical examples and exercises are included, both analytic and numerical, some of which use an interactive feature that allows Python code to be used in the web browser without any additional software installation.

Puerto Rico's San Juan Bay Estuary faces multiple threats, including heavy use by urban populations and impacts of climate change. A workbook from the EPA's Climate Ready Estuaries program helped them catalog, prioritize, and address their climate risks.

This course is a graduate reading seminar, in which historical and contemporary studies are used to explore the interaction of technology with social and political values. Emphasis is on how technological devices, structures, and systems influence the organization of society and the behavior of its members. Examples are drawn from the technologies of war, transportation, communication, production, and reproduction.

Students explore the physical and psychological effect of stress and tension on human beings. Concepts of stress and stress management are introduced. Students discover how perception serves to fuel a huge industry dedicated to minimizing risk and relieving stress. Students complete a writing activity focused on developing critical thinking skills. Note: The literacy activities for the Mechanics unit are based on physical themes that have broad application to our experience in the world concepts of rhythm, balance, spin, gravity, levity, inertia, momentum, friction, stress and tension.

This course covers principles and methods for technical System Architecture. It presents a synthetic view including: the resolution of ambiguity to identify system goals and boundaries; the creative process of mapping form to function; and the analysis of complexity and methods of decomposition and re-integration. Industrial speakers and faculty present examples from various industries. Heuristic and formal methods are presented. Restricted to SDM (System Design and Management) students.