Most Popular Books by Richard h. Thaler

In its attempt to model financial markets and the behavior of firms, modern finance theory starts from a set of normatively appealing axioms about individual behavior. Specifically, people are said to be risk-averse expected utility maximizers and unbiased Bayesian forecasters, i.e., agents make rational choices based on rational expectations. The rational paradigm may be criticized, however, because (1) the assumptions are descriptively false and incomplete, and (2) the theory often lacks predictive power. One way to make progress is to characterize actual decision- making behavior. Efforts along these lines are made by behavioral economists and psychologists. This paper provides a selective review of recent work in behavioral finance. First, we ask why economists should be concerned with the psychology of decision-making. Next, we discuss a series of key behavioral concepts, e.g., people''s well-known tendencies to give too much weight to vivid information and to show excessive self-confidence. The body of the paper illustrates the relevance of these concepts to important topics in investment theory and corporate finance. In each case, behavioral finance offers a new perspective on results that are anomalous within the standard approach.

El impulso que necesitas para tomar mejores decisiones sobre salud, dinero y felicidad. Una nueva edición imprescindible —revisada y actualizada de cabo a rabo— de uno de los libros más importantes de las últimas dos décadas, del premio Nobel Richard H. Thaler y Cass R. Sunstein Desde la publicación original de Nudge hace más de una década, el título ha entrado en el vocabulario de empresarios, legisladores, ciudadanos comprometidos y consumidores de todo el mundo. El libro ha dado lugar a más de 400 “unidades de empujón” en gobiernos de todo el mundo e innumerables grupos de científicos del comportamiento en cada parte de la economía. Nos ha enseñado cómo usar una “arquitectura de elección” reflexiva, un concepto que inventaron los autores, para ayudarnos a tomar mejores decisiones para nosotros, nuestras familias y nuestra sociedad. Ahora, los autores han reescrito el libro de cabo a rabo, haciendo uso de sus experiencias dentro y fuera del gobierno durante los últimos doce años, así como una explosión de nuevas investigaciones en numerosas disciplinas académicas. Para comprometerse a nunca volver a emprender esta tarea abrumadora, la llaman la "edición final". Ofrece una gran cantidad de nuevos conocimientos, tanto para sus fanáticos declarados como para los recién llegados al campo, sobre una amplia variedad de problemas que enfrentamos en nuestra vida diaria: COVID-19, salud, finanzas personales, ahorros para la jubilación, deuda de tarjetas de crédito, vivienda. hipotecas, atención médica, donación de órganos, cambio climático y "lodo" (papeleo y otras molestias que no queremos y que nos impiden obtener lo que queremos), todo mientras respetamos una de las reglas cardinales de empujar: hacer ¡es divertido! ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 400 “nudge units” in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful “choice architecture”—a concept the authors invented—to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society. Now, the authors have rewritten the book from cover to cover, making use of their experiences in and out of government over the past dozen years as well as an explosion of new research in numerous academic disciplines. To commit themselves to never undertaking this daunting task again, they are calling this the “final edition.” It offers a wealth of new insights, for both its avowed fans and newcomers to the field, about a wide variety of issues that we face in our daily lives—COVID-19, health, personal finance, retirement savings, credit card debt, home mortgages, medical care, organ donation, climate change, and “sludge” (paperwork and other nuisances we don’t want, and that keep us from getting what we do want)—all while honoring one of the cardinal rules of nudging: make it fun!

Decision makers do not make choices in a vacuum. They make them in an environment where many features, noticed and unnoticed, can influence their decisions. The person who creates that environment is, in our terminology, a choice architect. In this paper we analyze some of the tools that are available to choice architects. Our goal is to show how choice architecture can be used to help nudge people to make better choices (as judged by themselves) without forcing certain outcomes upon anyone, a philosophy we call libertarian paternalism. The tools we highlight are: defaults, expecting error, understanding mappings, giving feedback, structuring complex choices, and creating incentives.

A question of increasing interest to researchers in a variety of fields is whether the incentives and experience present in many "real world" settings mitigate judgment and decision-making biases. To investigate this question, we analyze the decision making of National Football League teams during their annual player draft. This is a domain in which incentives are exceedingly high and the opportunities for learning rich. It is also a domain in which multiple psychological factors suggest teams may overvalue the "right to choose" in the draft -- non-regressive predictions, overconfidence, the winner''s curse and false consensus all suggest a bias in this direction. Using archival data on draft-day trades, player performance and compensation, we compare the market value of draft picks with the historical value of drafted players. We find that top draft picks are overvalued in a manner that is inconsistent with rational expectations and efficient markets and consistent with psychological research

We argue that narrow framing, whereby an agent who is offered a new gamble evaluates that gamble in isolation, separately from other risks she already faces, may be a more important feature of decision-making under risk than previously realized. To demonstrate this, we present evidence on typical attitudes to independent monetary gambles with both large and small stakes and show that across a wide range of utility functions, including all expected utility and many non-expected utility specifications, the only ones that can easily capture these attitudes are precisely those exhibiting narrow framing. Our analysis also makes predictions about the kinds of preferences that might be able to address the stock market participation and equity premium puzzles. We illustrate these predictions in simple portfolio choice and equilibrium settings

Some eleven million 401(k) plan participants take a concentrated equity position in their retirement savings account, investing more than 20% of the balance in their employer''s common stock. Yet investing in the stock of one''s employer is a risky investment on two counts: single securities are riskier than diversified portfolios (such as mutual funds), and the employee''s human capital is typically positively correlated with the performance of the company. In the worst-case scenario, illustrated by the Enron bankruptcy, workers can lose their jobs and much of their retirement wealth simultaneously. For workers who expect to work for the company for many years, a dollar of company stock can be valued at less than 50 cents to the worker after accounting for the risks. But employees still invest voluntarily in their employers'' stock, and many employers insist on making matching contributions in stock, despite the fact that a dollar of investment or contribution may be worth only 50 cents on the dollar. How can competitive labor markets sustain a situation in which employers and employees make such a fundamental miscalculation? We provide evidence that employees underestimate the risk of owning company stock, while employers overestimate the benefits associated with employee stock ownership relative to its costs. This evidence provides strong reasons to consider legal reforms in this domain. We make suggestions that would increase employees'' freedom of choice and improve their welfare, but without imposing significant costs on well-meaning but ill-informed employers.

The equity premium puzzle, first documented by Mehra and Prescott, refers to the empirical fact that stocks have greatly outperformed bonds over the last century. As Mehra and Prescott point out, it appears difficult to explain the magnitude of the equity premium within the usual economics paradigm because the level of risk aversion necessary to justify such a large premium is implausibly large. We offer a new explanation based on Kahneman and Tversky''s ''prospect theory''. The explanation has two components. First, investors are assumed to be ''loss averse'' meaning they are distinctly more sensitive to losses than to gains. Second, investors are assumed to evaluate their portfolios frequently, even if they have long-term investment goals such as saving for retirement or managing a pension plan. We dub this combination ''myopic loss aversion''. Using simulations we find that the size of the equity premium is consistent with the previously estimated parameters of prospect theory if investors evaluate their portfolios annually. That is, investors appear to choose portfolios as if they were operating with a time horizon of about one year. The same approach is then used to study the size effect. Preliminary results suggest that myopic loss aversion may also have some explanatory power for this anomaly.

"Misbehaving" by Richard H. Thaler challenges the traditional economic assumption of rational actors, revealing how humans consistently deviate from rationality in decision-making. Thaler, a pioneer in behavioral economics, explores the serious consequences of these misbehaviors in various aspects of life, from personal finance to market dynamics. The book narrates his journey to bring the study of human miscalculations into mainstream economics, highlighting the intersection of psychology and economics. Thaler''s work emphasizes that economic trends are unpredictable due to human unpredictability, offering insights into making smarter decisions in a complex world. The book combines humor, anecdotes, and academic rigor to provide a unique perspective on the profound impact of behavioral economics on individuals, businesses, and governments.

Spanish Abstract: La “economía del comportamiento” intenta incorporar ideas de otras ciencias sociales, en especial de la psicología, para enriquecer el modelo estándar. El interés en la psicología del comportamiento humano es un retorno de la economía a sus orígenes. Adam Smith aludió a conceptos clave como la aversión a la pérdida, el exceso de confianza y el autocontrol. La economía del comportamiento encontró resistencia entre economistas que preferían mantener el modelo neoclásico estándar y argumentaban que la psicología se podía ignorar. Este ensayo muestra que esos argumentos han sido rechazados teórica y empíricamente, y que se deber seguir adelante. El nuevo enfoque debería incluir dos tipos de teorías: modelos normativos que caractericen la solución óptima de problemas específicos y modelos descriptivos que capten el comportamiento humano real. Estos últimos incorporarán variables llamadas factores supuestamente irrelevantes, que ayudarán a mejorar el poder explicativo de los modelos económicos.