Richard Thaler quotes

Richard Thaler is an American economist known for his pioneering work in behavioral economics. His research has fundamentally changed how economists think about human decision-making and market behavior. He has received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the field. Here are 66 of his quotes:

Sunk costs? We pay too much attention to them. (Richard Thaler)
Retirement savings is probably behavioral economists' greatest success story. It is a prototypical behavioral-economics problem because saving for retirement is cognitively hard - figuring out how much to save - and requires self-control. View quote
Richard Thaler
If rather than setting the minimum balance as the lowest possible amount, so we keep people in debt for as long as possible, we raise the minimum payment and encourage people to pay off their credit cards, we're going to make less money, but we're going to have costumers that are more solvent. View quote
Richard Thaler
Many problems are so complex that even if we had the money to fix them, we wouldn't know how to do it. Fixing inner-city schools, reducing obesity, creating peace in the Middle East are just a few examples. View quote
Richard Thaler
There can be legal conflicts over whether registering intent is enough to qualify you as an organ donor or whether a doctor must still ask your family's permission. View quote
Richard Thaler
Doctors and hospitals should be paid for keeping their patients well. Paying them for doing more tests and surgeries creates bad incentives. View quote
Richard Thaler
We should at least make sure that patients are given the opportunity to opt out of spending their final days in a hospital, hooked up to tubes and running up enormous bills. View quote
Richard Thaler
When it comes to my health, I would rather my doctor base her decisions on science rather than what she, or some lawyer, thinks will stand up in court. View quote
Richard Thaler
I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible. View quote
Richard Thaler
God did not say that you should be able to borrow one hundred percent of the price of a house. View quote
Richard Thaler
Anybody who's ever been in a large organization realizes that 'optimizing' is not a word that would often be used to describe any large organization. The reason is that it's full of people, who are complicated. (Richard Thaler)
We all need a lot of humility, and especially about the economy. View quote
Richard Thaler
You go out on the practice range, and something kind of clicks, and you start hitting the ball very crisply. And you're sure that you've found it, the holy grail - that all you have to do is hold your hand in a certain way. Then you go out on the golf course, and it's completely disappeared. View quote
Richard Thaler
Companies are accumulating vast amounts of information about your likes and dislikes. But they are doing this not only because you're interesting. The more they know, the more money they can make. View quote
Richard Thaler
The ability of businesses to monitor our behavior is already a fact of life, and it isn't going away. Of course we must protect our privacy rights. But if we're smart, we'll also use the data that is being collected to improve our own lives. View quote
Richard Thaler
Even a mother - Jewish or not - can't worry about everything. So it is important that we limit our worries to real as opposed to imaginary risks. View quote
Richard Thaler
Leaders are important but not omnipotent. View quote
Richard Thaler
Lotteries are just one way to provide positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued. View quote
Richard Thaler
If you want to encourage some activity, make it easy. View quote
Richard Thaler
It's hard to have any idea of how much money is enough to finance an appropriate lifestyle in retirement. But if a lump sum is translated into a monthly income, it's much easier to determine whether you have enough put away to afford to stop working. View quote
Richard Thaler
If we think that high marginal tax rates are bad because they distort incentives, the same is then true for tax subsidies. (Richard Thaler)
One reason for high health care costs is that patients fail to follow their treatment regimen. View quote
Richard Thaler
One of society's thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness. View quote
Richard Thaler
Signing up to be an organ donor should be at least as easy as downloading a song to your iPhone. View quote
Richard Thaler
The lesson of my field, behavioral economics, is that we need to understand the ways in which we differ from the rational human assumed in standard economic theory. View quote
Richard Thaler

Richard Thaler

Richard Thaler - Image
Photo: Chatham House, CC BY 2.0
Occupation: American Economist
Born: September 12, 1945
Quotes count: 66

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