A review by yeconomist
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler

4.0

This book did a great job of balancing and informing the reader about what I see as the twin goals of telling the personal story of the author as well as teaching about the development of the field of behavioral economics. It was a classic story of a minor figure with strong evidence taking on the established behemoth and winning, driving real change. It was valuable to learn about the first hand account of challenging the mainstream view of those high ups in the economics profession and fighting for change. In addition the personal anecdotes and stories the author includes makes it easier to relate to their plight and allows the reader to put themselves in the shoes of the author. Moreover, felt the book did a great job of catering to a wide audience with respect to the detail with which the potentially technical economic and psychological ideas were covered. As someone situated within the economics field but with very little experience with psychology, I did not find the economics sections boring or the psychology sections beyond my grasp. In addition I found the lack of credence originally given to theories we know take for granted as well as the unwillingness of others to adapt to evidence based conclusions astonishing. Finally the organization of the book in to different subsections of the struggle, trying to gain admission to different areas of the economics field and the various applications of the theory was well laid out and easy to follow.