Author

Rick Bookstaber 28 posts 0 comments

Rick Bookstaber is currently working in Washington as Senior Policy Adviser to the Financial Stability Oversight Council and Senior Policy Adviser at the SEC. Before the current stint, Rick worked at Bridgewater Associates, ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint Partners and was in charge of risk management at Moore Capital Management. In investment banking, Rick was in charge of firm-wide risk and a member of Salomon Brothers' Risk Management Committee. Rick also spent ten years at Morgan Stanley, designing derivatives, doing proprietary trading, and concluding as the firm's first market risk manager. Rick is the author of four books and scores of articles on finance including A Demon of Our Own Design. Bookstaber received a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

Monetary System

Human Complexity and the Strategic Games of Uncertainty

Rick Bookstaber Mar 25, 2011

In a recent post I discuss the limitations of neoclassical economics and the strain of behavioral economics that remains tethered to it. I argue that they fail because the market is inhabited by people, heterogeneous and context-sensitive,…

Monetary System

Context, Content and the Turing Test

Rick Bookstaber Feb 28, 2011

By Rick Bookstaber In a recent post I laid the blame for the inadequacies of neoclassical economics and behavioral economics on the failure to take into account human context. By context I mean that humans make decisions that are colored…

Political Economy

Tiger Mothers and the History of the Chinese Examination System

Rick Bookstaber Feb 14, 2011

By Rick Bookstaber In the Ming Dynasty, (1368 – 1644), China established an examination system as a merit-based approach for appointments to government office. There were three levels to the exams, with the final cut then coming through an…

Monetary System

Why are We ‘Irrational’: The Path from Neoclassical to Behavioral Economics 2.0

Rick Bookstaber Feb 1, 2011

By Rick Bookstaber A few months ago I discussed the failing of econophysics, and more generally, the economic paradigm that treats people like computers and views economic dynamics like physics. The natural follow up question is, “What can…

Business

The Future of Facebook and the World as We Know It

Rick Bookstaber Jan 10, 2011

By Rick Bookstaber (A cross post by Rick Bookstaber which originally appeared at rick.bookstaber.com.) The following reflects my views and not those of the SEC or its staff. Where will Facebook be in ten or fifteen years? In our…

Monetary System

Secular Deflation

Rick Bookstaber Nov 22, 2010

A cross post by Rick Bookstaber which originally appeared on his blog. My last post posited a future world where technology-driven production and consumption lead to a secular drop in demand, and with it a drop in employment, resulting in…

Economy

The Technology-Driven Consumption Trap

Rick Bookstaber Oct 4, 2010

by Rick Bookstaber This reflects my personal opinion, not the views of the SEC or its staff. I just finished reading Robert Reich’s new book, Aftershock. The critical points of the book are well presented in his pre-publication New York…

Political Economy

Regulation in Defense of Capitalism

Rick Bookstaber Sep 18, 2009

The following post appeared on Wednesday at Rick Bookstaber’s new blog. Bookstaber is a market veteran who has long and storied history of achievement. He worked at Bridgewater Associates, ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint…