Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Dick Thaler reflects on nuts to nudges--The economist as story teller

Some Thaler stories, from the horse's mouth

Behavioral economics from nuts to ‘nudges’
A bowl of cashews led to a research breakthrough
by Richard H. Thaler

"People think in stories, or at least I do. My research in the field now known as behavioral economics started from real-life stories I observed while I was a graduate student at the University of Rochester. Economists often sneer at anecdotal data, and I had less than that—a collection of anecdotes without a hint of data. Yet each story captured something about human behavior that seemed inconsistent with the economic theory I was struggling to master in graduate school. Here are a few examples:..."


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