Academia, in comparison, is a very risk-averse environment, and many graduate students learn risk aversion and nothing else.
The major leagues' risk-averse environment would seem a strange one for Hamilton to emerge in.
Financing in the current risk-averse environment can be a bear, because some banks will not make loans on breakthrough combinations.
But in the current risk-averse environment, lower yields may do little, in turn, to encourage investors to buy riskier assets and stimulate demand.
Benjamin Hoffman called today's baseball a "risk-averse environment," as cautious major league managers choose not to run their teams into or out of big innings.
In this, CalPERS is in line with most institutional investors, which are rushing to put their money into the best properties they can find.. "I've never been in such a risk-averse environment," says a big European fund manager.The fund will also play closer to home.
What does a small-cap fund manager do in this small-cap-averse environment?
Today's risk-averse environment isn't receptive to startups of any kind.
Building solar-panel factories and cellulosic-ethanol plants is a lot more expensive than sticking up a new social-networking Web site hence even tougher for VCs to stomach in the current, risk-averse environment.
Crucially, it also has one of the most reform-averse environments.
"Moreover in the current risk-averse economic environment, with consumers and companies reluctant to spend, QE has got to work harder and harder.
