https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2017/press.html

Press Release: The Prize in Economic Sciences 2017

9 October 2017

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017 to

Richard H. Thaler
University of Chicago, IL, USA

"for his contributions to behavioural economics"

Integrating economics with psychology

Richard H. Thaler has incorporated psychologically realistic assumptions into analyses of economic decision-making. By exploring the consequences of limited rationality, social preferences, and lack of self-control, he has shown how these human traits systematically affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.

Limited rationality: Thaler developed the theory of mental accounting,explaining how people simplify financial decision-making by creating separate accounts in their minds, focusing on the narrow impact of each individual decision rather than its overall effect. He also showed how aversion to losses can explain why people value the same item more highly when they own it than when they don't, a phenomenon called the endowment effect. Thaler was one of the founders of the field of behavioural finance, which studies how cognitive limitations influence financial markets.

Social preferences: Thaler's theoretical and experimental research on fairness has been influential. He showed how consumers' fairness concerns may stop firms from raising prices in periods of high demand, but not in times of rising costs. Thaler and his colleagues devised the dictator game, an experimental tool that has been used in numerous studies to measure attitudes to fairness in different groups of people around the world.

Lack of self-control: Thaler has also shed new light on the old observation that New Year's resolutions can be hard to keep. He showed how to analyse self-control problems using a planner-doer model, which is similar to the frameworks psychologists and neuroscientists now use to describe the internal tension between long-term planning and short-term doing. Succumbing to shortterm temptation is an important reason why our plans to save for old age, or make healthier lifestyle choices, often fail. In his applied work, Thaler demonstrated how nudging – a term he coined – may help people exercise better self-control when saving for a pension, as well in other contexts.

In total, Richard Thaler's contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making. His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioural economics, which has had a profound impact on many areas of economic research and policy.

瑞典皇家科学院已决定将2017年瑞典国家银行纪念阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔经济学奖授予

美国伊利诺伊州芝加哥大学的理查德·塞勒
“表彰他对行为经济学的贡献”

融心理学于经济学

理查德·塞勒把心理现实的假设融入了经济决策的分析。他通过探究有限理性、社会取向和自控缺失的后果，展示了这些人类特质如何系统性地影响个人决定和市场走向。

有限理性：塞勒提出“心理账户”理论，解释了人们如何通过在脑海中创建单独的账户、关注每个具体决定的狭义影响而不是其整体效应来简化财务决策。他还展示了对损失的厌恶如何能解释人拥有一样东西时比不拥有时更看重它，这一现象叫做禀赋效应。塞勒是行为金融学领域的奠基人之一，行为金融学研究认知局限如何影响金融市场。

社会取向：塞勒在公平性方面的理论研究和实验研究影响巨大。他展示了消费者对公平性的顾虑如何阻止公司在需求大的时期提价，但在成本上涨时期却不会。塞勒及其同行设计了“独裁者游戏”，这是一件实验工具，大量研究用它来量度世界各地不同人群对公平的态度。

自控缺失：人们早就观察到一个现象——新年决心很难遵守，塞勒做出了新的阐释。他展示了如何用计划者-执行者模型分析自控问题，该模型类似于目前心理学家和神经科学家用来描述长期规划和短期执行之间的内在紧张的框架。屈从于短期诱惑是我们为养老开始存钱或选择更健康的生活方式等计划常常失败的一个重要原因。塞勒在应用工作中表明，nudging（他造的一个术语）也许能帮助人们在为养老存钱时以及其它情况下进行更好的自控。

总之，理查德·塞勒的贡献在个体决策的经济学分析和心理学分析之间架起一座桥梁。他的经验性发现和深刻的理论见解对于创立快速发展的行为经济学这一新领域作用非凡，而行为经济学已对许多经济研究领域和政策领域产生深远影响。

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