Richard H. Thaler (US)

Economist Richard Thaler is the co-author of Nudge, the widely acclaimed study of decision-making, policy and ‘choice architechture’. The book and its studies have been cited by governments, NGOs and policy-makers all of the world and his work as a pioneer of behavioural economics saw him awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Richard is the Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth Business School, and Director of the Center for Decision Research. He is also co-director of the Behavioral Economics Project at the National Bureau of Economic Research (with fellow Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller).

Considered by many to be one of the fathers of behavioural economics, which integrated psychological research with economic theory, Richard’s work has explored the contradiction between rational economics and irrational human behaviour. He is also one of the pioneers of behavioural finance, as well as several other off-shoots from the field. For many years he wrote a series of influential articles on decision making ‘Anomalies’ in the Journal of Economics Perspectives. The first group of these articles was collected in the popular book, The Winner's Curse - Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life.

Richard is also the author of Quasi Rational Economics and of numerous academic articles. He has written on a wide variety of subjects, from savings and investing to marketing, decision making, and financial markets. He’s even examined contestant behaviour on the game show Deal or No Deal, and an analysis of the NFL draft.