John R. Birge
Connections across commodity markets create the potential for risk to propagate and for failures to cascade as successive market agents fail. The structure of these networks is, however, often hidden and not directly observable. This article describes methods to uncover this hidden structure and the implications that these hidden connections may have for predicting risk propagation and cascading failures. The results are described in the context of electricity, gasoline, and financial markets. They illustrate the potential of this methodology to help address energy and commodity policy issues and their environmental implications.