About this item
Get ready to change the way you think about economics.Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans -- predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth -- and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists. In other words, we misbehave.
About the Author
Richard H. Thaler is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business where he director of the Center for Decision Research. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research where he co-directs the behavioral economics project. Professor Thaler's research lies in the gap between psychology and economics. He is considered a pioneer in the fields of behavioral economics and finance. He is the author of numerous articles and the books Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics; Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (with Cass Sunstein) , The Winner's Curse, and Quasi Rational Economics and was the editor of the collections: Advances in Behavioral Finance, Volumes 1 and 2. He also wrote a series of articles in the Journal of Economics Perspectives called: "Anomalies". He is one of the rotating team of economists who write the Economic View column in the Sunday New York Times.
