Sublime

Each of the systems interacts with its environment in a game-like way: sequences of action (“moves”) occasionally produce payoff, special inputs that provide the system with the wherewithal for continued existence and adaptation.

a natural way to fund public/supermodular goods without relying excessively on the limited knowledge of administrators is for such an administrator, philanthropist, or public authority to match contributions by distributed individuals.

The uncertainty in question will not be an accident of our circumstances — it will be entirely deliberate. We want to tempt others to engage in economic behavior, the output of which is uncertain, at the opportunity cost of behavior that is presumably much more certain. In effect, we are buying uncertainty with certainty.

Inspired by these events, John quickly developed a theory for how leverage causes booms and busts. He did this in 2000, eight years before the 2008 financial crisis.6 Whereas Minsky simply presented the idea that waves of investor pessimism and optimism could influence borrowing and possibly cause a crash, John’s mathematical theory linked

But occasionally some would find forecasts that would change their behavior enough to perturb the overall price pattern, causing other investors to change their forecasts to re-adapt. Cascades of mutual adjustment would then ripple through the system. The result was periods of tranquility followed randomly by periods of spontaneously generated

Two great problems in Economics Allocation in the Economy Quantities: General equilibrium, international trade, game-theory outcomes . . . Formation in the Economy Processes: Of econ development, discovering novel technologies, structural change, arrival of new institutions, temporary phenomena like bubbles, crashes . . . The former is

In addition to everything else he accomplished, John von Neumann is also the father of game theory. After finishing his day job on the Manhattan Project, he collaborated with Oskar Morgenstern to publish Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944. The Boston Public Library’s list of the “100 Most Influential Books of the Century” includes Theory

Lehman Brothers