A workshop sponsored by America's National Science Foundation at which economists explored the potential of "agent-based models" (ABM) is highlighted. Professor Lo presented a model of the American housing market, inspired by ABM approaches, which showed how a fateful conjunction of rising house prices, falling interest rates and easy access to refinancing created an awesome burden of debt.

The Retirement Income Summit, a gathering of financial advisers this spring, confirmed that employers committed to educating workers about saving for retirement have a lot on their plate, both now and in the years to come. Andrew Lo, a professor at MIT, cited a study that found as people age they begin to make poor financial decisions.

"We need a vibrant OTC swaps market for the global economy, but there are systemic issues that need to be considered," says MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo in a story on the methods big banks use to price over-the-counter derivatives, potentially to their own advantage...

When the rest of the world was busy buying second homes with no money down, MIT professor Andrew Lo was busy beating the drum over a coming financial crisis. For a while, he was playing to an empty room, but now his prescience makes him a voice of authority as we deal with the meltdown and its aftermath. Fortune recently spoke with Lo about the goods and bads of financial reform, how to prepare for calamities to come, and the "holy grail" of good regulation...

Investors should plan now for when and how financial decisions should be made if they become impaired, says investment strategist and professor Andrew Lo.

This story on a recent paper co-authored by MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo describes his proposal for a five-tiered organization of uncertainty to more effectively understand and calculate risk in economic systems.

In this episode, Planet Money hosts take a closer look at proprietary trading, which is under attack by the latest proposal from the Obama administration. The new banking regulations proposed by the president call for a ban on commerical banks engaging in potentially risky trades with their own funds—or, in some cases, your own funds. Professor Andrew Lo helps shed some light on the murky world of 'prop trading.'

A new paper co-authored by Andrew Lo of MIT estimates that repeated "cash-out" refinancings of mortgages led to more than $1 trillion in additional losses in this crisis.

MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo comments on end-of-year concerns for a 'double-dip' recession: "Year end is typically not a great time and the flight to safety into bills in motivated in part by general concerns about the economy and whether another shoe, such as commercial real estate, will drop," says Lo.

Citadel may have a higher burden of proof than other brokers since its bread-and-butter business is making bets in the markets. "The perception of a conflict of interest is a hurdle that they're going to have to go the extra mile to manage," says Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

That hedge funds can be illiquid and unpredictable was an important lesson from last year's market meltdown, says Andrew Lo, director of MIT's Laboratory for Financial Engineering.

A study co-authored by MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo concluded that under certain conditions, all it takes to fan the flames [of a financial crisis] is for a critical mass of people to extract money from their homes in the form of home equity loans, sales and "cash-out" refinancing.

The basic principles of asset allocation need to be revised," says MIT finance professor Andrew Lo. He and other experts argue that since market volatility is rising, you must now own other assets—such as hedge-fund-like investments—in addition to stocks and bonds to manage risk. And you must be prepared to shift your mix tactically from time to time. "You need to be proactive and adjust as the market changes."

In this letter to the editor, MIT Sloan Prof. Henry Birdseye Weil says that MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo's article, 'Why animal spirits can cause markets to break down,' makes "an extremely important point. Models that assume, at least implicitly, that decisions-makers understand the structure of the market and how it produces the dynamics that can be observed or might potentially occur can be dangerous simplifications and seriously miselading."