A professor from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business has won top honors in the field of economics. According to a press release, Richard Thaler was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017.
Thaler was honored for investigating the implications of relaxing the assumption that everyone in the economy is rational and selfish, instead entertaining the possibility that some of the agents in the economy are sometimes human. He currently serves as the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics.
Thaler joins 89 other University of Chicago scholars and faculty members to receive Nobel Prizes, including five current faculty members who are Nobel laureates in economics:
- Profs. Eugene Fama and Lars Hansen (2013)
- Roger Myerson (2007)
- James Heckman (2000)
- Robert E. Lucas Jr. (1995)
Thaler is well-known for making complex issues in economics easy to understand. His work has been published in the American Economics Review, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Political Economy. In his books, he uses relatable scenarios to show how human behavior often contradicts traditional economic logic. His books include:
- “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics”
- “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness”
- “Quasi-Rational Economics”
- “The Winner’s Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life”
Thaler is a native of New Jersey, and received his bachelor’s degree from Case Western Reserve University in 1967. He earned his masters and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1970 and 1974, respectively. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1995, following teaching stints at the University of Rochester and Cornell University. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, the Sloan School of Management at MIT, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
This is not the first time Thaler has been honored for his contributions to the field of economics. He was listed in Bloomberg Markets 50 Most Influential People in 2015, and was the American Economic Association’s president for 2015. Thaler’s most popular appearance, however, actually comes from the Academy Award nominated film The Big Short, in which he appears alongside Selena Gomez for the scene you can watch below.
