PortalsOS

The U.S. economy is dynamic and difficult to read at any point in time. Currently, the labor market's low hiring rate and low layoff rate create a bifurcated experience for workers, depending on their employment status.

Richard Thaler recommends the Journal of Economic Perspectives as a valuable and accessible resource for those interested in economics. He praises its approach to making academic articles understandable to a broader audience.

The real debate in economics has been about whether models should reflect people behaving as if they were maximizing their outcomes, even if they don't literally know how to do it. This has been a central theme in my career.

The post-World War II era saw a pivot away from big state programs towards neoliberalism, characterized by market economies with welfare systems and sensible regulations. This shift marked a significant change in economic policy.

Richard Thaler notes that the largest economics department in the world is now at Amazon, with over 100 PhDs working on data-driven experiments. This highlights the growing importance of economics in real-world applications.

At a dinner party with economists, I removed a bowl of cashew nuts to prevent overeating. This sparked a discussion on choice, highlighting that more options aren't always better, which contradicts traditional economic theory.

Richard Thaler discusses the resistance he faced in academia when introducing behavioral economics. He recalls a time when he presented his theories on saving behavior to a psychology department, and the audience laughed because they found the traditional economic models unrealistic. Thaler points out that economists believed people behaved like expert billiards players, acting as if they knew physics, which he found absurd.

The economic challenges facing the UK require a reevaluation of welfare spending and tax policies to ensure sustainability.

Richard Thaler discusses his project of revisiting and updating his 1992 book on economic anomalies. He highlights the importance of verifying whether the foundational experiments still hold true today, both in theory and in real-world applications.

Behavioral economics emerged when psychologists started questioning traditional economic models, pointing out that people don't always act rationally. This led to a more nuanced understanding of economic behavior.