American economist Richard H. Thaler has won 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to Behavioural economics.
Behavioural economics deals with decision-making that lies in the space between economics and relates to the impacts of psychology, social cognition, emotion factors in the decision making process in economics.
Professor Thaler has been awarded the Nobel Prize for his decisive contribution in “BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS”-work on integrating economics with psychology.
Professor Thaler has incorporated psychologically realistic assumptions into analyses of economic decision-making.
Thaler has explored the consequences of limited rationality, social preferences,self control in decision making and has shown how these human traits systematically affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.
He is co-author (with Cass R. Sunstein) of global best seller Nudge (2008) in which concepts of behavioral economics are used to tackle many of society’s major problems.
Uniqueness of economic noble prize
The economics prize, officially called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968.
It was not part of the original group of awards set out in dynamite tycoon Nobel’s 1895 will.