Richard Thaler

Richard Thaler is a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School and received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics. His contributions include mental accounting (showing people treat money differently based on its source), the endowment effect (people value things more once they own them), and nudge theory (with Cass Sunstein). Thaler has also researched the "winner's curse" in auctions, market anomalies, and closed-end fund puzzles. His book "Nudge" co-authored with Sunstein has influenced policy design globally. He advises Fuller & Thaler Asset Management, which applies behavioral insights to investing. His research on the equity premium puzzle — the observation that stocks have historically returned far more than bonds in ways that standard expected utility theory cannot explain — helped establish the field of behavioral finance as a rigorous alternative to purely rational models of investor behavior. His work on automatic enrollment in retirement savings plans has had measurable impact on retirement preparedness across millions of US workers.