All Topics  
Richard Thaler

 

   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link






 

Richard Thaler



 
 
Richard H. Thaler (born September 12, 1945, in East Orange
East Orange, New Jersey

East Orange is a City in Essex County, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA. As of the United States 2000 Census, the city had a total population of 69,824....
) is an American economist
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
 perhaps best known as a theorist in behavioral finance
Behavioral finance

Behavioral economics and behavioral finance are closely related fields that have evolved to be a separate branch of economic and financial analysis which applies scientific research on human and social, cognitive bias and emotional factors to better understand economic decision making by consumers, borrowers, investors, and how they aff...
 and for his collaboration with Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases , and developed Prospect theory ....
 and others in further defining that field. He received his B.A. from Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, with some residence halls on the south end of campus located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio....
 in 1967. At the University of Rochester
University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private university, nonsectarian, research university located in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and professional degrees through six schools and various interdisciplinary programs....
, he received his M.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
 in 1974. He currently teaches at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and is an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research
National Bureau of Economic Research

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying the science and empirics of economics, especially the Economy of the United States....
.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Richard Thaler'
Start a new discussion about 'Richard Thaler'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


Richard H. Thaler (born September 12, 1945, in East Orange
East Orange, New Jersey

East Orange is a City in Essex County, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA. As of the United States 2000 Census, the city had a total population of 69,824....
) is an American economist
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
 perhaps best known as a theorist in behavioral finance
Behavioral finance

Behavioral economics and behavioral finance are closely related fields that have evolved to be a separate branch of economic and financial analysis which applies scientific research on human and social, cognitive bias and emotional factors to better understand economic decision making by consumers, borrowers, investors, and how they aff...
 and for his collaboration with Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases , and developed Prospect theory ....
 and others in further defining that field. He received his B.A. from Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, with some residence halls on the south end of campus located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio....
 in 1967. At the University of Rochester
University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private university, nonsectarian, research university located in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and professional degrees through six schools and various interdisciplinary programs....
, he received his M.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
 in 1974. He currently teaches at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and is an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research
National Bureau of Economic Research

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying the science and empirics of economics, especially the Economy of the United States....
. He has previously taught at Cornell University
Cornell University

Cornell University located in Ithaca, New York, USA, is a private university with four Statutory college. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and Education City, Qatar....
 and the MIT Sloan School of Management
MIT Sloan School of Management

The MIT Sloan School of Management is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, in the United States....
.

Thaler presides as an in-house expert who regularly consults with Barack Obama
Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the List of Presidents of the United States and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office....
's top economic advisor for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, Austan Goolsbee
Austan Goolsbee

Austan Dean Goolsbee, born August 18, 1969, is an economist and is currently the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business....
 .

Thaler has also organized a series of behavioral finance seminars along with Robert Shiller
Robert Shiller

Robert James "Bob" Shiller is an United States economist, academic, and best-selling author. He currently serves as the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management....
, another behavioral finance expert at the Yale School of Management
Yale School of Management

The Yale School of Management is the graduate business school of Yale University and is located on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut, Connecticut, United States....
.

Thaler gained some attention in the field of economics for publishing a regular column in the Journal of Economic Perspectives from 1987 to 1990 titled Anomalies, in which he documented individual instances of economic behavior that seemed to violate traditional microeconomic
Microeconomics

Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies how individuals, households and firms and some states make decisions to allocate limited resources, typically in markets where goods or services are being bought and sold....
 theory.

Kahneman later cited his joint work with Thaler as a "major factor" in his receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics
Nobel Prize in Economics

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially named The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel , is an award for outstanding contributions in the field of economics and is generally considered one of the most prestigious awards in that field....
, saying "The committee cited me 'for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science ….'. Although I do not wish to renounce any credit for my contribution, I should say that in my view the work of integration was actually done mostly by Thaler and the group of young economists that quickly began to form around him."

Thaler also is the founder of an asset management firm that enables a select group of investors to capitalize on cognitive bias
Cognitive bias

A cognitive bias is a person's tendency to make errors in judgment based on cognitive factors, and is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology....
es such as the endowment effect
Endowment effect

The endowment effect is a hypothesis that people value a good or service more once their property right to it has been established. In other words, people place a higher value on objects they own than objects that they do not....
, loss aversion
Loss aversion

In prospect theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains....
 and status quo bias
Status quo bias

The status quo bias is a cognitive bias for the status quo; in other words, people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling....
.

Thaler has also written a number of books intended for a lay reader on the subject of behavioral finance, including Quasi-rational Economics and The Winner's Curse, the latter of which contains many of his Anomalies columns revised and adapted for a popular audience.

In one of his most recent papers , together with three Dutch economists Thaler has analyzed the choices of contestants appearing in the popular TV game show Deal or No Deal
Deal or No Deal

Deal or No Deal is the name of several closely related television game shows, the first of which was produced by Dutch producer Endemol....
 and found support for behavioralists' claims of path-dependent risk attitudes.

Thaler is coauthor, with Cass R. Sunstein, of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale University Press, 2008). Nudge discusses how public and private organizations can help people make better choices in their daily lives. "People often make poor choices - and look back at them with bafflement!" Thaler and Sunstein write. "We do this because as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself." Thaler and his co-author coined the term choice architect
Choice architecture

Choice Architecture describes the way in which decisions are influenced by how the choices are presented, and is a term used by Cass Sunstein and economist Richard Thaler in the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth And Unhappiness....
.

See also


  • Endowment effect
    Endowment effect

    The endowment effect is a hypothesis that people value a good or service more once their property right to it has been established. In other words, people place a higher value on objects they own than objects that they do not....
  • Status quo bias
    Status quo bias

    The status quo bias is a cognitive bias for the status quo; in other words, people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling....
  • Mental accounting
    Mental accounting

    A concept first named by Richard Thaler , mental accounting attempts to describe the process whereby people code, categorize and evaluate economic outcomes....
  • Choice architecture
    Choice architecture

    Choice Architecture describes the way in which decisions are influenced by how the choices are presented, and is a term used by Cass Sunstein and economist Richard Thaler in the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth And Unhappiness....


External links


  • Thaler discusses libertarian paternalism on EconTalk
    EconTalk

    EconTalk is a weekly podcast hosted by professor Russell Roberts at George Mason University. The talk consists of Roberts interviewing a guest--often a professional economist--while discussing topics in economics....
    .