Misbehaving - The Making of Behavioral Economics Paperback – 1 January 2016

Economics is about choices. Most of us with limited incomes try and exercise prudent choices to Optimise our budgets. In free markets, prices move up and down till supply and demand meet, reaching Equilibrium. Voila! We have a perfect equation on hand: Optimization + Equilibrium = Economics.What if this simple equation is not a perfect ‘Science’ and has ‘Anomalies’ that defy the rigid laws of science? The basis of such thought is that People, and not Science, are at the core of all human interactions including our decisions on personal life, or in balancing our budgets. Hence Economics in real life reflects our not so rational behavior which in turn is influenced by the vagaries of our Psychology. Just as the ‘Invisible Hand’ tries to discipline markets, our invisible minds individually and collectively at times does just the opposite. Hence Economics in practice means ‘Behavioral’ Economics, which is a combination of Economics and Psychology. This is my simple understanding of this complex field and this book is about the saga of integrating the two, in a fiercely guarded domain of pure Economic science.The cases and concepts are rich and insightful.It is well proven that in market economies, equities as a class of asset handsomely outperforms debt and bond markets and generate ‘premium’ returns. In fact, over any twenty-year period in the history of stock markets, equity returns have always been consistently higher. Yet, we allocate most of our retirement savings in ‘safe’ debt and bond funds, if at all. I understood this fallacy through a simple game illustrated in the book, that I am modifying slightly.Consider the following choices:Choice A: Flip a coin. If you get heads, you get $ 10; If you get tails, you lose nothing.Choice B: Flip a coin. If you get heads, you get $ 100. If you get tails, you lose $ 50.If the game must be played only ONCE, most of us would perhaps play choice A since there is a chance of winning a $ 10, while there is no risk of losing.On the other hand, if the game is to be played a Hundred times and results added, it is a no-brainer to jump to Choice B. (This is like saying that Newton would perfectly predict, that an apple from the tree would certainly fall to the ground, but when it comes to a Hundred, he might bet on their journey in the opposite direction!). Hence, to me the key learning is to invest as much in equities, early, retire early and find time to read books like these!!There is also a great example on how innovation can be nurtured in companies. If there are about 25 projects, each with equal chance of generating $ 10 million in revenues and losing $ 5 million, chances are that, these projects in individual corporate silos, managed by individual managers are bound to be shelved. On the other hand, if the corporate innovation culture aggregates all these projects with no punishment for failure, it would be a great success. Corporate Innovation Strategy for the CEO.Our telescopic vision is myopic, and mental accounting is flawed argues Prof Thaler.One Anomaly comes to my mind after reading this wonderful book. The author would be delighted to hear on ‘anomaly’ from a common man like me. It is this. Cultures vary vastly across countries, communities and continents. (Hofstede dimensions for example). Hence if the Cooperation game is played in two different countries with vast cultural differences, say India and Germany, would the results be same, or significantly different? If similar economic policies are adopted in these countries, it succeeds in one and fails miserably in another. (My reference to the books ‘Culture and Prosperity: Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor’ by John Kay, and ‘The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere’’ by Hernando De Soto). (I have published my reviews on Amazon.com.)If so, can Culture be added as a Third dimension? Would this explain more of the Macro part of Economics? Pardon me if I am dead wrong. I am a Human and not an Econ.Thank you, Prof Thaler for this outstanding book. This book took lots of time for me to read. It involves deep thought and gradual assimilation, and the risk of being branded lazy. Yet it pays, even to be a lazy common man!

Money spending, how we spend, how we misbehave in real life. How to make financial decisions, or infact how we do make our financial decisions. How can we improve our money spending. It's all in there. There are no such tactics like we should do this or that... There are behavior reasons that why we make financial misbehavings.Good for the ones who are working on any startup idea 💡, as they can get the idea about human behavior.You should have read enough to make things clear about the behavioural economics, if one is a new to economics or business or behaviour science, should skip and come back after a bit of sloches.Enjoy reading and rereading.Thaler explains to much about whom he met who was he what did what he doing ..sometiem it's a bit annoying!

I found this to be a very interesting read and it gave me a different way of looking at economics.

An Incredible book - a study BIBLERichard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017, and for excellent reasons! I'd like you to please read this book to understand why.A fantastic collection of facts, stories, case studies and experiments, this is NOT to be misunderstood as a book on "Economics".Nope. It's a book about how all of us - Humans behave in the real world.While innumerable examples will 'wow' you, my FAVORITE part is Why Stock Prices trade at Premiums to Risky Free Debt in EXCESS of what they should :) It's a CLASS insight:)Get, Read, Mug up (memorise), Repeat, Implement!

I had read Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast & Slow" earlier and found the current book to be, in some ways, a sequel. The author Richard Thaler talks about his friendship with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and how the interactions between the three of them shaped the field of behavioral economics. The author's journey from an outsider, who questioned the dogma of rationality that underpins most mathematical models used in economics, to one who advised state governments on public policies is inspirational.I hope that more policy makers, especially in the developing world, take note of author's work in conjunction with the works of Robert Cialdini, Daniel Kahneman, and Dan Ariely to guide public policies in education and healthcare.

All the examples are time tested and very result oriented, every CEO , evey business man , comman man looking for financial knowledge should read it .

Excellent read. Written in a layman style, this book is an engaging read that makes one fall in love with behavioral economics.

Although I haven't studied economics and theories therein, the subject has always been fascinating. Having read #freakonomics & then #superfreakonomics, #Misbehaving has been an outstanding read for it declutters and simplifies the secret of making choices and motivation thereof. Richard Thaler is a master at storytelling.