American economist Richard Thaler has won this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics. Former Reserve Bank of India governor, Raghuram Rajan, who was also among the list of probables, missed out on the coveted honour.
Prof Thaler is one of the founding fathers of behavioural economics and teaches at the University of Chicago Booth. He famously co-authored the international best seller Nudge, which looked at how people make bad or irrational choices.
JOIN US IN CONGRATULATING RICHARD H. THALER!
Just awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences “for his contributions to behavioural economics”. pic.twitter.com/jUaobO6cA9— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 9, 2017
The Nobel judges said that Thaler had demonstrated how “nudging” – a term he coined – may help people to exercise better self-control. He will receive 9 million Swedish krona (About Rs 7.3 crore) along with the medal and citation.
“I will try to spend it as irrationally as possible!” the 72 year-old economist was quoted by BBC.
One of the Nobel prize judges, Per Stroemberg, said Thaler’s work had explored how human psychology shaped economic decisions.
“Richard Thaler’s findings have inspired many other researchers coming in his footsteps and it has paved the way for a new field in economics which we call behavioural economics,” Stroemberg said.