At first glance, concepts are scattered and disjointed, but they come together into a coherent, solid argument, much like the field of behavioral economics itself. He has a natural dry wit, freely admitting throughout his book to cutesy vices, like how he couldn’t resist a bowl of cashew nuts, is supposedly bad at math, and that his “single best quality” is laziness. Thaler’s writing style is affable and self-deprecating. Misbehaving as a whole is riddled with humorous anecdotes and interesting footnotes. The story’s major conflict is the prevalent struggle against classical economics purists from Thaler and his colleagues, an enterprising group of renegade academics defying the norm.

Indeed, Thaler was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2017 for his contributions which have “built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making.” As a result, as the book progresses, we observe findings from the economic community used less and less, and psychological studies applied more and more to economic decisions. The foundation behind these economic theories is the field of psychology. The central idea of behavioral economics is that standard economic models for predicting human behavior, based on assumptions that everybody makes rational decisions in their own self-interest for monetary profit- are wrong, and in fact humans make decisions based on their biases, emotions, and situations. Misbehaving is structured in roughly chronological order, following the Thaler’s career path and his gradual findings as a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics, from when ideas were first conceived as a fringe movement, to scientific analysis and research, to the expansion of its exercise in the real world as a recognized field of study today. A resident of Chicago and the popular coauthor of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness with Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, Thaler’s most recent book published in 2015 entitled Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics offers more insight into his personal experiences and writing style. Richard Thaler was recently awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Economics.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thalerĭr.

Book Review: Tiana Luo (Northside College Prep), written

Misbehaving richard