An exploration of the remarkable consequences of using Boltzmann's 1870s probability theory and cutting-edge 20th Century mathematics in economic settings. An understanding of risk, market stability and economic inequality emerges.

The lecture presents two problems from economics: the leverage problem "by how much should an investment be leveraged", and the St Petersburg paradox. Neither can be solved with the concepts of randomness prevalent in economics today. However, owing to 20th-century developments in mathematics these problems have complete formal solutions that agree with our intuition. The theme of risk will feature prominently, presented as a consequence of irreversible time.

A lecture by Dr Ole Peters

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/time-for-a-change-introducing-irreversible-time-in-economics

With meme stocks, on the other hand, that’s exactly what’s happening: The small investors on the r/Wallstreetbets subreddit are taking part in a conscious collective effort to drive the prices of these stocks up.

How are they doing it? By embracing companies that Wall Street, for good reason, hates: beaten-down firms in legacy businesses with weak economic fundamentals. The Redditors don’t love these companies because they think their future prospects are genuinely great, even if in most cases there’s been some catalyst that suggests the underlying business could improve going forward. Instead, what meme stocks all have in common is that they start off with a cheap stock price and a relatively low market cap, and they’re heavily shorted, meaning that hedge-fund managers are betting that these stocks are going to fall. (GameStop, for instance, was and still is one of the most heavily shorted stocks on Wall Street.)