Thaler, Famed for ‘Nudge’ Theory, Wins Nobel Economics Prize

Richard H. Thaler won the Nobel Prize for Economics, a reward for 40 years of work spent studying human bias and temptation when many fellow economists preferred to view people as rational actors.

Thaler, 72 and a professor at the University of Chicago, is one of the founders of behavioral economics and finance, a field which once drew derision from some academics before entering the mainstream over the past decade. He was made a Nobel laureate for shedding light on how human weaknesses such as a lack of rationality and self-control can ultimately affect markets.