Thaler’s 2017 Nobel Brings Behavioral Economics to Forefront

Author of the bestseller Nudge and professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at University of Chicago’s business school, Richard Thaler was awarded the 2017 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics today, Monday, October 9th. The award was made for his contributions to behavioral economics: “how people make economic decisions” and “how human traits affect individual decisions as well as financial markets”.

With scientific articles like “Mental accounting and consumer choice” and “Does the stock market overreact?”, Thaler’s writings about the underlying reasons why people make irrational financial decisions remain just as relevant today as they were in 1985. And while the two aforementioned articles have been cited many thousands of times, his entire body of work has gained over 100,000 references. His lucid expositions of choice architecture, loss aversion, and mental accounting are remarkably understandable by all audiences and have had a vast impact ranging from marketing to policy to health.

Thaler’s Nobel is by no stretch the first to tie psychology to economics. His colleague and collaborator Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University won the Prize in 2002 for work on Prospect Theory. However, Thaler’s work is particularly close to our heart here at Wellth, as we routinely implement his concepts in our products, research design, and personal choices in daily life. (See our recent press in Telemedicine and NY Times.) Thanks for all you’ve done, Richard, to teach us about human behavior and fortify the core scientific basis of our business. We are thrilled to hear you’re getting the recognition you deserve!

Photo credit: This image was originally posted to Flickr by Chatham House, London at https://flickr.com/photos/43398414@N04/19531134028 (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 license)