英文标题：
《Big is Fragile: An Attempt at Theorizing Scale》
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作者：
Atif Ansar, Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, and Daniel Lunn
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最新提交年份：
2017
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英文摘要：
  In this paper we characterise the propensity of big capital investments to systematically deliver poor outcomes as \"fragility,\" a notion suggested by Nassim Taleb. A thing or system that is easily harmed by randomness is fragile. We argue that, contrary to their appearance, big capital investments break easily - i.e. deliver negative net present value - due to various sources of uncertainty that impact them during their long gestation, implementation, and operation periods. We do not refute the existence of economies of scale and scope. Instead we argue that big capital investments have a disproportionate (non-linear) exposure to uncertainties that deliver poor or negative returns above and beyond their economies of scale and scope. We further argue that to succeed, leaders of capital projects need to carefully consider where scaling pays off and where it does not. To automatically assume that \"bigger is better,\" which is common in megaproject management, is a recipe for failure.
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中文摘要：
在本文中，我们将大型资本投资系统性地带来不良结果的倾向描述为“脆弱性”，这是Nassim Taleb提出的一个概念。容易受到随机性伤害的事物或系统是脆弱的。我们认为，与它们的外观相反，大型资本投资很容易破裂——即产生负净现值——这是由于在其长期酝酿、实施和运营期间影响它们的各种不确定性来源。我们并不否认规模经济和范围经济的存在。相反，我们认为，大型资本投资具有不成比例的（非线性）不确定性，这些不确定性带来了超出其规模经济和范围的低回报或负回报。我们进一步指出，为了取得成功，资本项目的领导者需要仔细考虑扩大规模在哪里有好处，在哪里没有好处。自动假设“越大越好”，这在大型项目管理中很常见，这是失败的秘诀。
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分类信息：

一级分类：Quantitative Finance        数量金融学
二级分类：Economics        经济学
分类描述：q-fin.EC is an alias for econ.GN. Economics, including micro and macro economics, international economics, theory of the firm, labor economics, and other economic topics outside finance
q-fin.ec是econ.gn的别名。经济学，包括微观和宏观经济学、国际经济学、企业理论、劳动经济学和其他金融以外的经济专题
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一级分类：Quantitative Finance        数量金融学
二级分类：General Finance        一般财务
分类描述：Development of general quantitative methodologies with applications in finance
通用定量方法的发展及其在金融中的应用
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