One of the true field-defining pioneers
of behavioral economics. Coauthor of Nudge.

Highlights

Richard Thaler is one of the two researchers credited with the original groundbreaking work in behavioral economics—the study of how thinking and emotions affect individual economic decisions and the behavior of markets.

Markets often don’t behave as traditional economists describe them and people often don’t make sense when they make economic decisions. The reason is human psychology. The explanation is behavioral economics. The expert is Richard Thaler.

The solution is a Nudge, which Thaler calls ‘libertarian paternalism’—using noncoercive policies designed to make people better off (as judged by themselves) without restricting their freedom of choice—using recent research in human behavior to improve human decisions.

Richard's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness shows that you can design environments that make it more likely for people to act in their own interests. This is an invaluable message for business and public policy makers.

Richard Thaler is Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics and Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. He is a regular contributor to the Economic View column of The New York Times.

Thaler was credited with doing most of the work of integrating of psychology into economics by Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics.

Along with his coauthor of Nudge, Dr. Thaler was recently chosen as number 7 on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list.

Nudge

In Nudge, Richard Thaler shows businesses and policy makers how to use the way we really think to improve our decisions about health, wealth and happiness. . . because people often do not make decisions that are in their best interests. A nudge can make all the difference—setting up the decision so that they do act in their best interest, without interfering with their freedom of choice.

Policy makers in business and government set up ‘decision architectures’ all the time, environments in which people have to make a choice. How food gets displayed in the cafeteria, how the company presents its 401(k) or its healthcare plan. In Nudge, Richard explains why and how the arrangement should be designed to make people better off.

He applies this idea in three main areas:

money—how to do a better job of saving, investing and borrowing and how private and public institutions could nudge people toward wealth and security;

health—how to improve prescription drug plans, organ donation and environmental protection;

freedom—how to improve choices in education, increase the ability of patients and doctors to contract with each other, and gett government out of the marriage business.

Credentials

• Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics, Director of the Center for Decision Research, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago
• Regular contributor, Economic View column, The New York Times
• Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research
• Co-director (with Robert Shiller) of the Behavioral Economics Project; funded by the Russell Sage Foundation
• Cofounder, Fuller & Thaler Asset Management, Inc.
• Honors Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences
• Former Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
• Former Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Economics, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University; Director, Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Making
• A number of visiting professorships