Peter P. Wakker

Peter Paul Wakker (; born March 16, 1956) is a Dutch economist. He is a professor of Behavioral Economics at the Erasmus School of Economics, in Rotterdam, and a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute. He is considered one of most important researchers in the fields of behavioral economics and decision theory.

Wakker's research within behavioral economics is mostly related to understanding our attitudes towards uncertainty, risk and ambiguity. He has also done research in axiomatic decision theory, in particular related to the utility representation of preferences. In both of those fields, Wakker has done both theoretical and experimental work.

Biography

Life and education

Peter P. Wakker was born in Herwen en Aerdt on March 16, 1956. His father was a border custom's agent. Wakker studied Mathematics and Physics at the University of Nijmegen, from where he got a Master's degree in Mathematics, with a specialization in probability theory and statistics. During that time, he was very influenced by de Finetti and Bayesian statistics.

Wakker earned his PhD in 1986 from Tilburg University's Center for Economic Research (CentER), under the supervision of Pieter Ruys and Stef Tijs. During his PhD, he did some work at the Tel Aviv University under the supervision of David Schmeidler.

Career

From 1992 to 2000, Wakker was a professor at the Medical Decision Making Unit of Leiden University's Medical Center. He was also a professor at the universities of Maastricht, Tilburg, and Amsterdam. Since 2005, he has been a professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, initially at the Econometric Institute and since 2010 at the Erasmus School of Economics.

Publications

Books

Selected papers