, Columnist
A Nobel for Humility in Economics
An award for looking at how the world works, not a grand unifying theory.
Seeing things from a different perspective.
Photographer: Vasily MaximovThis article is for subscribers only.
As you are by now all probably aware, Richard Thaler won this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. All question of whether this is a “real” Nobel can now be laid to rest, since the announcement was made via the Nobel Prize’s official verified Twitter account.
Thaler won the prize for his research in behavioral economics, although he’s far from the first behaviorist to win it -- Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, and Robert Shiller all got the big gold medal from Sweden. But Thaler’s work is arguably more wide-ranging and influential than any of those earlier pioneers. And it’s the sheer breadth of Thaler’s research that offers a peek into where the discipline of economics is headed.