Nobel prize in economics awarded to Richard Thaler

Source: The Guardian




University of Chicago academic described as a pioneer of behavioural economics whose work had made a ‘profound impact’

Richard Partington
Monday 9 October 2017 06.37 EDT

The 2017 Nobel prize in economics has been awarded to the US academic Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago for his contribution to behavioural economics.

The prize, worth 9m Swedish kroner (£845,000), is not among the Nobel Foundation’s official awards for literature, peace, medicine, physics and chemistry, but was established separately by Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, in memory of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described Thaler as a pioneer of behavioural economics, which had progressed in recent years from a fringe and somewhat controversial field of research into a mainstream component of the economics profession.

His research was praised for incorporating psychological assumptions into analyses of economic decision-making. The prize-givers said his work had shown how the limitations of an individual’s knowledge in the decision-making process, as well as the consequences of social preferences and a lack of self control, can affect people’s decisions as well as market outcomes.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/09/nobel-prize-in-economics-richard-thaler