2025-11-07
33 分钟There are mythical creatures that stride the land of economics.
Their species name is Homo economicus.
The myth says they're perfectly rational, self-interested, calculating individuals.
Whole economic models have been built on this creature's ability to rationally maximise their happiness.
Economists use these models to predict decisions and behaviour.
Of course,
everyone always knew Homo economicus was never a fully accurate description of the way people behave.
It was a useful simplification,
but that was easy to forget when it came to describing the results of complex economic models.
If there's been a backlash against the assumption of rationality,
that happened in large part because of the work of our guest on today's show.
He's the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics
for showing time and again that human decisions are anything but rational.
I'm Chris Giles, the FT's economics commentator.
Welcome to The Economic Show from The Financial Times.
You may well have guessed that in this episode, I'm speaking to Richard Thaler,
the economist widely seen as the founding father of modern behavioral economics,
a branch of economics that integrates psychological insights into economic analysis.
Famously, he co-authored the 2008 bestseller Nudge,
which reshaped how policymakers think about human decision making.