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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.