Nobel in Economics Is Awarded to Richard Thaler
Professor Thaler said on Monday that the basic premise of his theories was that,
“In order to do good economics you have to keep in mind that people are human.”
Asked how he would spend the prize money, he replied: “This is quite a funny
question.” He added: “I will try to spend it as irrationally as possible.”
The economics prize was established in 1968 in memory of Alfred Nobel and is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Mr. Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, jokingly described the honor for his longtime collaborator as “unboundedly rational.”
“Before Thaler, economics had been using the rational actor models, assuming
that people make rational decisions about whether to buy drugs, how to invest, what jobs to take,” he said.
WASHINGTON — Richard H. Thaler was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for his contributions to behavioral economics.
Professor Thaler named this phenomenon, since documented across a wide range of human experience, an “endowment
effect.” One of his co-authors, Daniel Kahneman, was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2002.
Professor Thaler had a cameo appearance, alongside the actress
and singer Selena Gomez, in the film “The Big Short,” in which he used behavioral economics to help explain the causes of the financial crisis.
