Richard Thaler and the Human Side of Economics

This week in our Masters in Business radio podcast, we speak with the man known as the father of behavioral economics, Richard Thaler professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He has just won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Thaler began his career as an economist who asked the sorts of questions that gave his academic advisers fits. He was fond of identifying where actual human behavior differed from how economists theorized people behaved. The distinction between real people and homo economicus was so stark that a new field of economics was born. His new book, "Misbehaving," documents the rise of the field he helped found.