FEATURE3 August 2017

Richard Thaler In Seven

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Richard Thaler is an expert in behavioural economics and finance, and the psychology of decision-making. He is co-director of the Behavioral Economics Project at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2008, with Cass Sunstein, he Co-wrote Nudge, which laid out concepts of behavioural economics to tackle many of society’s major problems 

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When you wrote Nudge, did you anticipate the degree to which it would affect public policy, and it being used as the foundation for units such as The Behavioural Insights Team in the UK?

No way! When we proposed the book there was little interest from publishers, so we ended up with a sleepy university press that had no expertise or interest in publicising the book. We just hoped it might find an audience via word of mouth, but never in our wildest dreams did we think it might be approaching a million books sold around the world, much less the impact it has had on policy-making. When Cass and I think back on it we just shake our heads and mutter ‘amazing’.  

Do you think we needed a global recession like 2008 for people to seriously question economic theory?

No, I don’t think the financial crisis had much to do with the book’s success. It ...