Richard Thaler

Main ideas

• He carried the findings of Kahneman and Tversky into economics, and he is one of the founders of behavioral economics; the Nobel Prize in Economics, 2017.
• Mental accounting: the same koruna is worth something else depending on which "envelope" we file it under in our heads.
• Nudge: a small change in the architecture of choice — a default, the order of the options — changes a decision without forbidding anything.

What we take

Humility about the architecture of choice: the order of the answers, the wording, and the default in the test all affect the results, so we design them on purpose and in the open. We read the Benefit layer in Thaler's spirit — as a real human weighing of "what's in it for me", with every imperfection that brings.

What we do differently

Thaler proposes ways to gently steer other people's decisions. We steer nobody anywhere — we help a person see what is steering them.

Recommended books

• Nudge (2008, with Sunstein), in Czech Šťouch
• Misbehaving (2015), in Czech Neočekávané chování

Sources

• Thaler, R. (1985). Mental accounting and consumer choice. Marketing Science, 4, 199–214.
• Thaler, R. (1999). Mental accounting matters. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12, 183–206.
• Thaler, R., & Sunstein, C. (2008). Nudge. Yale University Press.
• Thaler, R. (2015). Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. Norton — his own telling of how the field began; a collective story, not the story of one founder.