48 pages • 1 hour read
Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. SunsteinNudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Richard H. Thaler (Author)
Richard H. Thaler is a professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017. The following year, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He has written several books, including Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, and published nearly 100 papers in his field. He is an important figure in the history of behavioral economics and has worked with pioneers in the field of cognitive bias like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Nudge is easily his most popular book.
In 1974, Thaler completed his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester where he was soon awarded a professorship. He then moved to Stanford (where he worked with Kahneman and Tversky, followed by a long tenure at Cornell. In 1995 he received his position at the University of Chicago where he remains. Thaler wrote a regular column called Anomalies for the academic journal, Economic Perspectives, in which he presented analyses of unexpected economic behavior. Though Thaler is widely respected, his views are not uncontroversial, and economists seem to have a more mixed view of nudge theory than legal philosophers or politicians.
Cass R. Sunstein (Author)
Cass R. Sunstein is an acclaimed legal scholar and behavioral economist. He has written dozens of books on a diverse array of subjects in law, politics, pop culture, behavioral psychology, and economics. In the years immediately following the publication of Nudge (2008), Sunstein worked in the Obama Administration as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Legal Affairs. Before this, he was a professor of law at the University of Chicago for nearly three decades. After his tenure in the White House ended in 2013, Sunstein moved to Harvard University where he is a professor of law. According to a scholarly impact study undertaken in 2014, Sunstein was the most-cited legal scholar in the United States. He received the Holberg Prize in 2018.
Over the course of Sunstein’s career he has written on a wide range of subjects including animal rights, administrative law, legal philosophy, the value of taxation, and the privatization of marriage. Among these numerous works Nudge is the most successful, spearheading the revolution in behavioral economics called “nudge theory.” Sunstein recently co-authored Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment with Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony. Several of his more popular titles include The World According to Star Wars, Republic.com, The Cost-Benefit Revolution, and How Change Happens. Sunstein is also an amateur squash player with a professional ranking.
