18. Finance as a Romance of Many Moments and Plural Views

The postmodern revival of portfolio theory is the story of an intellectual discipline coming to embrace the richness of economic accounts transcending its origins in austerely beautiful but excessively rigid mathematical models. Quantitative risk management harmonizes the making of policy in a wide range of domains, from the regulation of systemically important financial institutions to natural disaster prevention, mitigation, and recovery. Postmodern portfolio theory exploits the full range of sophisticated quantitative methods known in contemporary finance. Perhaps as importantly, postmodern portfolio theory acknowledges its own methodological limits. Comprehensive understanding of these tools, from their origins in early modern finance through contemporary postmodern critiques, places quantitative finance on the efficient frontier of risk management.