Ole Peters

I'm a Fellow at the London Mathematical Laboratory, and the Principal Investigator of its ergodicity economics program. I'm also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. I work on different conceptualizations of randomness in the context of economics. My thesis is that the mathematical techniques adopted by economics in the 17th and 18th centuries are at the heart of many problems besetting the modern theory. Using a view of randomness developed largely in the 20th century I have proposed an alternative solution to the discipline-defining problem of evaluating risky propositions. This provides a novel interpretation of expected utility theory and implies solutions of the 300-year-old St. Petersburg paradox, the leverage optimization problem, the equity premium puzzle, and the insurance puzzle. It leads to deep insights into the origin of cooperation, intertemporal discounting, and the dynamics of economic inequality. You can find me twitter under @ole_b_peters, and I maintain a popular blog that also hosts the ergodicity economics lecture notes.