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A review by robthereader
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler
4.0
Written as a reflective journal through Thaler’s career, Misbehaving lays out the ascent of behavioral economics with anecdotes and breakthroughs. Thaler and his renegade colleagues are met with opposition to their unorthodox of applying social science principles and research by traditional normative economists who insist markets are dominated by logical axioms. Where Thaler does not necessarily disagree that markets would be best run if they followed these exulted ideas, he does disagree in that they do not accurately reflect how humans, not their theoretical counterparts, Econs, actually make fiscal decisions.
The format of the book details Thaler’s humble starts as a self described lazy graduate student through his chance encounters with expert psychologists who steer his career in the direction of challenging the long accepted tenets of economics through first identifying irregularities that are supposedly irrelevant factors (SIF). This leads to conversing with further experts and then conferences and papers that successfully inject fresh ideas into the status quo.
As a novel economics writer, I did not take interest in Thaler’s long exposes on the quirky characters and stars of economics. In fact, I thought of demoting my rating until the end when he does his best writing in connecting real solutions to real problems with the principles of behavioral economics. His writing does however add to his style and allows the reader to develop further interest if they can get through the first few sections.
All in all, I enjoyed his introductions and clarifications to economics and finance topics. In particular, he does a good job of illustrating prospect theory as sort of the scientific process of economics. His recommendations for opt out retirement plans, preferred drafting and hiring strategies and office layouts all make for simple reminders on what drives human decisions. Having read this book, I look forward to reading his more acclaimed book, Nudge, which I suspect will follow a writing pattern more similar to the end of this novel rather than its beginning.
The format of the book details Thaler’s humble starts as a self described lazy graduate student through his chance encounters with expert psychologists who steer his career in the direction of challenging the long accepted tenets of economics through first identifying irregularities that are supposedly irrelevant factors (SIF). This leads to conversing with further experts and then conferences and papers that successfully inject fresh ideas into the status quo.
As a novel economics writer, I did not take interest in Thaler’s long exposes on the quirky characters and stars of economics. In fact, I thought of demoting my rating until the end when he does his best writing in connecting real solutions to real problems with the principles of behavioral economics. His writing does however add to his style and allows the reader to develop further interest if they can get through the first few sections.
All in all, I enjoyed his introductions and clarifications to economics and finance topics. In particular, he does a good job of illustrating prospect theory as sort of the scientific process of economics. His recommendations for opt out retirement plans, preferred drafting and hiring strategies and office layouts all make for simple reminders on what drives human decisions. Having read this book, I look forward to reading his more acclaimed book, Nudge, which I suspect will follow a writing pattern more similar to the end of this novel rather than its beginning.