Richard Thaler
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Richard H. Thaler (b. September 12, 1945, in East Orange, NJ) is an economist perhaps best known as a theorist in behavioral finance and for his collaboration with Daniel Kahneman and others in further defining that field. He received his B.S. from Case Western Reserve University in 1967. At the University of Rochester, he received his M.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1974. He currently teaches at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and is an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has previously taught at Cornell University and the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Thaler presides as an in-house expert who regularly consults with Barack Obama's top economic advisor for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, Austan Goolsbee [1].
Thaler has also organized a series of behavioral finance seminars along with Robert Shiller, another behavioral finance expert at the Yale School of Management.
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[2], in which he documented individual instances of economic behavior that seemed to violate traditional microeconomic theory.
Kahneman later cited his joint work with Thaler as a "major factor" in his receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics, 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." [3]
Thaler also is the founder of an asset management firm [4] that enables a select group of investors to capitalize on cognitive biases such as the endowment effect, loss aversion and status quo bias.
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 [5], together with three Dutch economists Thaler has analyzed the choices of contestants appearing in the popular TV game show Deal or No Deal 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." The book's web page can be found at www.nudges.org [6], and the Nudge blog at www.nudges.wordpress.com [7].
[edit] Notable contributions
[edit] References
- ^ The Audacity of Data
- ^ Anomalies
- ^ Daniel Kahneman-Autobiography
- ^ Fuller & Thaler Asset Management, Inc
- ^ Deal or No Deal? Decision Making Under Risk in a Large-Payoff Game Show
- ^ Nudge web page
- ^ Nudge blog
[edit] External links
- Curriculum Vitae
- Home page at U Chicago
- Article: Exuberance is rational
- Article: Deal or No Deal
- Podcast featuring Thaler Thaler discusses libertarian paternalism on EconTalk.
