Robin Dale Hanson, born August 28, 1959, is an American economist and author known for his work on prediction markets and idea futures. He is currently an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and was a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University until it closed in 2024. Hanson received a Ph.D. in social science from Caltech in 1997, as well as master's degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago. Before his Ph.D., he worked as a research programmer at Lockheed and NASA. He is married to Peggy Jackson and has two children.
Hanson is credited with developing market scoring rules like LMSR (Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule), which are used by prediction markets such as Consensus Point, where he is the Chief Scientist. He was involved in creating the Foresight Institute's Foresight Exchange and DARPA's FutureMAP project. Hanson also proposed the concept of "futarchy," a system of government where policies are determined by prediction markets. His research interests are diverse, spanning from health incentive contracts and evolutionary psychology to the survival of humanity and interstellar colonization. He has also written two books: The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth (2016) and The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life (2018), co-authored with Kevin Simler. He also maintains a blog called Overcoming Bias.
