Overview
Richard Thaler is a behavioral economist and pioneer in understanding how humans deviate from rational economic models. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017 for his contributions to behavioral economics.
Key Concepts
Thaler is known for several foundational ideas in behavioral economics:
- endowment-effect — People value items they own more highly than identical items they don’t own
- mental-accounting — Individuals mentally segregate money into different categories, treating each differently
- nudge-theory — Libertarian paternalism; designing choice architecture to influence decisions without restricting freedom
- loss-aversion — The tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains
Major Works
- misbehaving — His primary book documenting behavioral economics and human irrationality
Nobel Prize
Won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics “for his contributions to behavioural economics.”