17 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American behavioral economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business — who studies how psychological factors influence economic decisions, particularly around markets, attention, and motivated reasoning.
Israeli-American psychologist and cognitive scientist — co-creator with Kahneman of prospect theory and the heuristics-and-biases research program — the most brilliant of the behavioral economics founders — who died of cancer at 59 before the Nobel was awarded.
American legal scholar and philosopher who co-developed nudge theory, has written on deliberative democracy, and was Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Obama.
Israeli-American psychologist — Nobel Prize in Economics 2002 — author of Thinking, Fast and Slow — co-creator with Amos Tversky of prospect theory — the most influential psychologist in the history of economics.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's 2022 book applying large-scale data analysis to personal life decisions — career, relationships, parenting — arguing that data consistently outperforms intuition in high-stakes choices.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's 2017 book arguing that Google search data reveals what people actually think — as opposed to what they tell pollsters — uncovering hidden truths about racism, sexuality, anxiety, and social behavior.
Richard Thaler's 2015 memoir-style account of the development of behavioral economics — covering the Ultimatum Game, mental accounting, the endowment effect, nudge theory, and his Nobel Prize work — told as a story of fighting the economics mainstream.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's 2008 book — arguing that choice architecture (how options are presented) powerfully influences decisions, and that nudges (small changes to defaults and framing) can improve outcomes while preserving freedom.
Newsletter covering behavioral economics, psychology, and decision-making — applying academic research on human irrationality to practical life decisions.
American behavioral economist — University of Chicago Booth School — Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2017 — who built the behavioral economics research program on Kahneman and Tversky's foundations and co-created nudge theory.
American behavioral economist who developed nudge theory — applying behavioral economics insights to policy — and won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017.
British advertising executive, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, and behavioral economist known for counterintuitive insights into human psychology — arguing that behavioral economics reveals why irrational solutions to problems are often more effective than rational ones.
American data scientist and former Google economist who pioneered the use of aggregate search data as a window into genuine human behavior — revealing that what people search in private diverges dramatically from what they report in surveys.
Morgan Housel's book examining the psychology and philosophy of how and why people spend money, exploring the relationship between spending and identity.
Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson's 2018 book arguing that human behavior is primarily driven by hidden self-interested motives — status, signaling, dominance — that we systematically deny and rationalize as altruistic.
Michael Lewis's 2016 account of the intellectual partnership between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky — the most complete narrative of how behavioral economics was created and what the friendship's unequal fame cost both men.
Daniel Kahneman's 2011 synthesis of a career's behavioral economics research — presenting the System 1/System 2 framework for human cognition — the most widely read academic psychology book of the 21st century.