Richard Thaler Biography

Richard Thaler is an American economist who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2017. He is a longtime friend and collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, another Noble laureate, who had previously stated that it would be a scandal if Thaler were not short-listed for the Nobel Prize. Richard Thaler is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He is considered as one of the founding fathers of behavioral economics, a relatively new field of economics which takes into account human frailties like biases and lack of willpower while determining their decision-making process. However, there was a time when his attempts at including human psychology into the highly mathematical field of economics was considered so radical that he could not get his works published. He is now a global bestselling author of the book, 'Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness', with Cass Sunstein. Interestingly, he was never particularly interested in math and wanted to study psychology instead. While he considers himself “pretty good at math” when compared to average people, he still thinks that he would fare below average in a group of economists.