The Friendship That Created Behavioral Economics

The Atlantic:

The term “the economic man,” or homo economicus, is attributed to John Stuart Mill. It represents one way economists have studied people for decades—as rational, self-interested actors whose behaviors and actions can be modeled. But then came the psychologists.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky are often referred to as the fathers of behavioral economics, for demonstrating that the human brain relies on mental shortcuts and biases in decision-making, which often leads people to irrational ends. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002, for “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty.” In 2011, he wrote a best-selling book, Thinking Fast and Slow, about his research with Tversky.

Read the whole story: The Atlantic