Martin Shubik

Since 1970 has concentrated on the theory of money and financial institutions with the goal of understanding the micro-economic analytical approach that attempts to deal with the primarily static invariant properties of optimization in economies and reconciling this approach with the control, evolutionary and dynamic aspects of macroeconomics. In essence government money, and bank money are special nonsymmetric contractual substitutes for trust; most other credit forms are more or less symmetric contractual forms for a substitute for trust and a residuum of transactions such as family arrangements represent the economic activity based on non-contractual actions reflecting trust. Since 1953 has been advocating a mathematical institutional economics in order to reconcile invariant function with swiftly evolving and mutating form in economic and financial life. One of his other interests has been the enormous change in the lethality of small groups and his deep pessimistic feelings that the world has been fortunate to survive the last century. Is concerned that heroic steps are called for if the world is to survive the next century. His other interest is in the economics of cultural institutions.