Robin Hanson

American economist at George Mason — inventor of prediction markets (policy analysis market) — author of The Age of Em (on whole brain emulation) and The Elephant in the Brain (with Kevin Simler) — who consistently proposes contrarian models of human behavior and social institutions.

Creates the prediction market as a policy instrument — Hanson's design for markets that aggregate information about future events (later commercialized as Prediction Markets and Manifold Markets) is the most practically useful innovation from academic economics for improving collective forecasting.