This weekend is a big one for behavioral economics. This morning, Richard Thaler, laureate of The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017, has presented his prize lecture “From Cashews to Nudges: The Evolution of Behavioral Economics” in The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
And this Sunday will be the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony, Prof. Thaler will finally receive his well-deserved Nobel prize.
Thanks to everyone who came and many thanks for the very warm welcome at the end. Truly touched. https://t.co/aXMax86gDS
— Richard H Thaler (@R_Thaler) December 8, 2017
To celebrate this occasion, I am honored to share with you my interview with two of the best co-authors of Prof. Thaler — Hersh Shefrin and Shlomo Benartzi.
Q8
Prof. Benartzi, you are a frequent co-author with Prof. Thaler for many years on various subjects, from working on the equity premium puzzle in the early years to discussion on decision theories, then to works on Save More Tomorrow Program, and also Nudge policy applications.
Do you think the changes in the research direction of yours reflect the general development of the field of Behavioral Economics, that is the field is now less focused on the behavioral finance puzzles, but more on the general applications on policies that affect the daily life of the general public?
Benartzi: Yes, I think that’s a fair description of the field. And I think Thaler and Sunstein deserve a lot of credit for that shift, thanks to their book NUDGE. In my own recent work, I focus on applying behavioral economics and finance principles to the digital world.
