Quant Congress Europe: Quants should take share of blame for crisis

Quants should take their share of the blame for the crisis, and should focus on less mathematically complex models, said some panellists – although not everyone at Quant Congress Europe agreed

The quant community bears some responsibility for the crisis, as it pushed complex models that fuelled bad behaviour, according to some speakers at Quant Congress Europe this morning.

Speaking on a panel discussion on the future of the quant industry, John Crosby, visiting professor at the University of Glasgow, argued that quants were at least partly to blame as they built models that encouraged overconfidence on the part of banks that risks were under control.

"The problem with the models in