Dr. Blake LeBaron is the Abram L. and Thelma Sachar Chair of International Economics at the International Business School, Brandeis University. LeBaron was at the University of Wisconsin from 1988-1998, and also served as director of the Economics Program at The Santa Fe Institute in 1993.  He was a Sloan Fellow, and the 2014 recipient of the Market Technician’s Association Mike Epstein award.  He currently directs the Economics Ph.D. program at Brandeis, and is part of a Brandeis interdisciplinary research and teaching group interested in modeling dynamics in a wide range of fields.

LeBaron’s research has concentrated on the issue of nonlinear behavior of financial and macroeconomic time series. He has been influential both in the statistical detection of nonlinearities and in describing their qualitative behavior in many series. LeBaron’s current interests are in understanding the quantitative dynamics of interacting systems of adaptive agents and how these systems replicate observed real world phenomenon. Also, LeBaron is interested in understanding some of the observed behavioral characteristics of traders in financial markets. This behavior includes strategies such as technical analysis and portfolio optimization, along with policy questions such as foreign exchange intervention. In general, he seeks to find out the empirical implications of learning and adaptation as applied to finance and macroeconomics.