Mark Joseph Machina (born October 27, 1954) is an American

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

noted for work in non-standard

decision theory Decision theory or the theory of rational choice is a branch of probability theory, probability, economics, and analytic philosophy that uses expected utility and probabilities, probability to model how individuals would behave Rationality, ratio ...

. He is currently a distinguished professor at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. The Marschak–Machina triangle, a

probability Probability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an e ...

diagram used in

expected utility theory The expected utility hypothesis is a foundational assumption in mathematical economics concerning decision making under uncertainty. It postulates that rational agents maximize utility, meaning the subjective desirability of their actions. Rational ...

, bears his name, along with that of

Jacob Marschak Jacob Marschak (23 July 1898 – 27 July 1977) was an American economist. Life Born in a Jewish family of Kyiv, Jacob Marschak (until 1933 ''Jakob'') was the son of a jeweler. During his studies, he joined the social democratic Menshevik P ...

Machina Triangle

The Machina Triangle is a way of representing a three dimensional probability vector in a two dimensional space. The probability of a given outcome is denoted by a euclidean distance from the point that represents a lottery (probability).

References

External links

Machina's homepage at the Department of Economics at the University of California
* 1954 births Living people Economists from California Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni University of California, San Diego faculty Fellows of the Econometric Society 21st-century American economists {{US-economist-stub