Job Overview
Recognition Physics Institute seeks a full-time Research Fellow in economics whose primary work is strengthening, criticizing, and helping publish our emerging first-principles economics program. Recognition Science is a formal framework deriving physics, mathematics, and information theory from a single cost of imbalance, with a large Lean-verified core and an active publication program. We are now applying that framework to economics.
This is a theory-and-critique role, not a standard policy or forecasting job. You will spend most of your time translating unconventional formal claims into serious economics language, pressure-testing them against the economics canon, and helping design empirical tests that could prove them wrong. The central research question is whether classical welfare economics, Pareto optimality, and utility-based aggregation are projections of a deeper ledger/topology objective that standard private-value models cannot represent.
What you'll do:
- Translate Recognition Science economics results into clear, rigorous economics language suitable for papers, preprints, and technical notes.
- Critique internal drafts for hidden assumptions, overclaims, missing literature, and places where the argument would fail under mainstream economic standards.
- Map the framework against the economics canon, including welfare economics, Pareto optimality, Arrow-style aggregation, utility theory, general equilibrium, mechanism design, and monetary theory.
- Help develop publishable papers on topics such as the "C-blind projection," ledger/topology objectives, welfare aggregation, and the relationship between private utility and system-level economic value.
- Design and evaluate empirical tests using real economic data, including public blockchain / DeFi obligation graphs, financial networks, and other auditable ledgers.
- Collaborate with physicists, mathematicians, software engineers, and Lean/formalization researchers to turn rough derivations into precise definitions, arguments, and tests.
- Co-author papers where you contribute substantively, and help represent the institute's economics work in scholarly correspondence, peer review, and public technical discussion.
Minimum qualifications:
- PhD in Economics, Economic Theory, Finance, Econometrics, or a closely related quantitative field.
- Strong background in at least one of: welfare economics, social choice theory, general equilibrium, mechanism design, monetary economics, financial economics, econometrics, or economic networks.
- Peer-reviewed publication record or equivalent evidence of serious research writing.
Work Location:
Remote. Candidates must be able to collaborate reliably with a U.S.-based research team.
Pay: $60,000.00 - $75,000.00 per year
Benefits:
Work Location: Remote
