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Richard Thaler highlights the ethical considerations of nudges, noting that while they can be used to help people make better decisions, they can also be exploited for profit, as seen in the design of casinos and online gambling platforms.
Richard Thaler explains the fairness principle in markets using Uber as an example. He argues that if Uber charged $5,000 for rides during a crisis like 9/11, it would quickly go out of business due to public outrage. This highlights how businesses must consider psychological factors and customer perception, not just profit.
Richard Thaler explains the 'winner's curse' using a classroom auction of a jar of coins. The highest bidder often overpays, illustrating how competitive bidding can lead to irrational decisions. This concept was first identified by engineers at ARCO when bidding for oil leases.
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.
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.