Richard Thaler

Richard H. Thaler (/ˈθeɪlər/; born September 12, 1945) is an American economist and the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2015, Thaler was president of the American Economic Association.

Thaler is a theorist in behavioral economics. He has collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and others in further defining that field. In 2018, he was elected a member in the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2017, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to behavioral economics. In its announcement, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated that his "contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making. His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioral economics."

Thaler was born in East Orange, New Jersey, to a Jewish family. His mother, Roslyn (née Melnikoff) was a teacher, and later a real estate agent while his father, Alan Maurice Thaler, was an actuary at the Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey, and was born in Toronto. He has three children from his first marriage and is now married to France Leclerc, a former marketing professor at the University of Chicago and avid photographer.

Thaler graduated from Newark Academy, before going on to receive his B.A. degree in 1967 from Case Western Reserve University, and his M.A. in 1970 and Ph.D. degree in 1974 from the University of Rochester, writing his thesis on "The Value of Saving A Life: A Market Estimate" under the supervision of Sherwin Rosen. He also studied under departmental chair and neoclassicist Richard Rosett, whose wine-buying habits were featured in his research on behavioral economics.

After completing his studies, Thaler began his career as a professor at the University of Rochester.

Between 1977 and 1978, Thaler spent a year at Stanford University collaborating and researching with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who provided him with the theoretical framework to fit many of the economic anomalies that he had identified, such as the endowment effect.

From 1978 to 1995, he was a faculty member at the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University. Cornell established in 1989 the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research, with Thaler as founding director.