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A review by honzaf
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler
4.0
TL;DR People are not hyper-efficient optimization machines who evaluate every situation fully and always select the correct most optimal solution. People are people: flawed, biased and with limited computing capacity, which drives them to use clever mental shortcuts to deal with whatever life throws at them. Sometimes these heuristics work great, sometimes they mislead us or we fall prey to our biases.
I picked up these ideas already before reading this book, from various magazine articles, radio shows, and other books (and personal experience, ahem), so I cannot say I would learn too much new. But reading the book gave me appreciation for how new these ideas much have been when they first started popping up and challenging the traditional "economic wisdom" and how much resistance they received. Plus the anecdotes are amusing and the book is written in a very light tone. Good read.
I picked up these ideas already before reading this book, from various magazine articles, radio shows, and other books (and personal experience, ahem), so I cannot say I would learn too much new. But reading the book gave me appreciation for how new these ideas much have been when they first started popping up and challenging the traditional "economic wisdom" and how much resistance they received. Plus the anecdotes are amusing and the book is written in a very light tone. Good read.