Psychology of economics: Richard Thaler bags Nobel

The economics prize was established in 1968 in memory of Alfred Nobel and is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Richard H Thaler was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for his contributions to behavioural economics.

Thaler, born in 1945 in East Orange, New Jersey, works at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The Nobel committee, announcing the award in Stockholm, said that he was a pioneer in applying psychology to economic behaviour and in shedding light on how people make economic decisions, sometimes rejecting rationality.

His research, the committee said, had taken the field of behavioural economics from the fringe to the mainstream of academic research and had shown that it had important