Support Us
 
Search
MENUMENU
  • Nonfiction
        • Art
          • Architecture
          • Art History
          • Design & Illustration
          • Fashion & Style
          • Modern and Contemporary Art
          • Photography
        • Business
          • How to Invest
          • Leadership
          • Marketing
        • Economics
          • Behavioural Economics
          • Development Economics
          • Economic History
          • Finance
          • Financial Crisis
          • Globalisation & Inequality
          • World Economies
        • Environment
          • Climate Change
          • Environmental Ethics
        • Food & Cooking
          • The Best Cookbooks
          • Food & History of Food
          • Wine & Drinks
        • Health & Lifestyle
          • Death & Dying
          • Education
          • Family & Relationships
          • Happiness
          • Sex & Sexuality
        • History
          • Ancient History (up to 500)
          • Historical Figures
          • Military History
          • Medieval History (500-1400)
          • Modern History (1800-1945)
        • Language
          • Grammar & Punctuation
          • Learning Languages
          • Linguistics
        • Law
        • Literary Nonfiction
          • Biography
          • Essays
          • Memoir
          • Artists' Biographies
          • Travel
          • True Crime
        • Music & Drama
          • Classical Music & Opera
          • Film & Cinema
          • Music
          • Theatre
        • Nature
          • Dinosaurs & the Prehistoric World
          • The Earth
          • Plants, Trees & Flowers
        • Philosophy
          • Ancient Philosophy
          • Ethics & Moral Philosophy
          • Great Philosophers
          • Social & Political Philosophy
        • Politics & Society
          • Conflict & War
          • Feminism
          • Foreign Policy & International Relations
          • Human Rights
          • Terrorism
        • Psychology
          • Mental Health
          • Neuroscience
          • Psychoanalysis
          • Psychology Research
          • Self Help
        • Religion
          • Best Atheist Books
          • Buddhism
          • Christian
          • Islamic
          • Jewish
          • Religious History
        • Science
          • Astronomy
          • Biology
          • Geoscience
          • Maths & Statistics
          • Moon Landing
          • Popular Science
          • Physics
        • Sports, Games & Hobbies
          • Football (Soccer)
          • Gardening
          • Hobbies
          • Sport & Sporting Culture
        • Technology
          • Artificial Intelligence
          • Computing
          • Digital Age
          • History of Technology
          • Internet
  • Fiction & Literature
        • Classic English Literature
        • Contemporary Fiction
          • NEW Fiction
        • Literary Criticism
        • Literary Figures
        • Classical Studies
        • Romance
        • Comics & Graphic Novels
        • Fairy Tales & Mythology
        • Crime Novels
        • Mystery
        • Historical Fiction
        • Horror
        • Humour
        • Memoir
        • Poetry
        • Science Fiction
        • Short Stories
        • Thrillers
        • Fantasy
  • World
        • Africa
          • Egypt
          • Ghana
          • Nigeria
          • Rwanda
          • South Africa
          • Zimbabwe
        • Americas
          • Latin America
            • Argentina
            • Brazil
            • Chile
            • Cuba
            • Mexico
          • United States
          • Canada
        • Arctic & Antarctica
        • Asia
          • Afghanistan
          • Burma
          • China
          • India
          • Japan
          • Korea
          • Pakistan
          • Bangladesh
          • Sri Lanka
          • Singapore
          • Vietnam
        • Australia
        • Europe
          • Belgium
          • Britain
          • France
          • Germany
          • Greece
          • Ireland
          • Italy
          • Netherlands
          • Norway
        • Middle East
          • Iran
          • Iraq
          • Israel
          • Syria
          • Turkey
          • Yemen
        • Russia & FSU
          • Azerbaijan
          • Georgia
          • Russia
          • Ukraine
  • Kids
    • By Kids for Kids
    • High School Teachers Recommend Books by Subject
    • Best New Kids' Books
    • Novels & Novelists
  • Best Books of 2020
        • Politics
        • Biography
        • Memoirs and Autobiography
        • Cookbooks
        • Business
        • Philosophy
        • Fiction
          • Crime Fiction
          • Science Fiction
          • Historical Fiction
          • Romance
          • Mysteries
          • Thrillers
        • Nonfiction
        • Art
        • Economics
        • History
        • Science
        • Self Help
        • Audiobooks
        • Poetry
        • Kids Books
        • Kids Science
  • New Books
        • All new books
        • History
        • Philosophy
        • Science
        • Mathematics
        • Physics
        • Fiction
        • Biographies
        • Economics
        • Paperbacks
        • New Editions (of old books)
        • Our in-house reviews (nonfiction)
        • Our in-house reviews (fiction)
        • Gifts for Book Lovers
  • Audiobooks
    • Actors Read Great Books
    • Best Audiobooks for Kids
    • Books Narrated by Their Authors
    • Best Audiobook Thrillers
    • Best History Audiobooks
  • Book Awards
    • Booker Prize
    • Baillie Gifford Prize
    • Royal Society
    • Wolfson Prize
    • Walter Scott Prize
    • Arthur C Clarke Prize
    • Audie Awards
    • Nobel Prize
  • Experts

Economics » Behavioural Economics

Most Recommended Books

Nudge by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

“Nudge is the best endorsement for social psychology that I’ve ever read…….Nudge has been enormously influential in policy circles. Around the world, city, state, and federal governments are trying to design policies and procedures that nudge. There are nudge units within companies, focused on how to improve the functioning of businesses. So, Nudge has had a huge impact and it does a nice job of describing why social psychology and behavioral science more broadly matter in our world.”

Nicholas Epley,

Read more

How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich

“This is a book about intuitive human judgment and how the way we think about the world can be distorted and misdirected by forces within our own mind, like our tendency to think well of ourselves, by cognitive forces, such as the ease with which information comes to mind, and by environmental forces, like asymmetries in feedback. So, for instance, acts of commission, things that people do, come to mind more readily than acts of omission, things that people don’t do. So our judgments can be distorted by the presence of information, as opposed to its absence. And that can lead to systematic mistakes.How We Know What Isn’t So remains the best book in the field at describing the basic psychological mechanisms that can lead even super smart people to make mistakes.”

Nicholas Epley,

Read more

Browse book recommendations:

Economics

  • Behavioural Economics
  • Development Economics
  • Economic History
  • Economics Textbooks
  • Finance
  • Financial Crisis
  • Globalisation & Inequality
  • New Books
  • World Economies

Welcome to all our book recommendations and interviews that shed light on behavioural economics. If you find the term confusing, you're not alone. It essentially means using the insights of psychology about how human beings really behave to not only understand economic decisions better, but also, possibly, to 'nudge' us into behaving more sensibly (like saving money for our retirement). Traditional economics always presumed we behaved that way, but of course we don't.

A sign the field of behavioural economics was finally being taken seriously was the award of the Nobel Prize for Economics to Daniel Kahneman in 2002. Kahneman was a psychologist by background, and had never taken an economics class in his life. Below, you'll see a discussion of the ground-breaking work he published with Amos Tversky, as well as our interview with Yale economics professor Robert Shiller, who won the Nobel economics prize in 2013 for his work on 'irrational exuberance.'

Some of the funnest and most practical books on behavioural economics are written by Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University, who recommends his best books on behavioural economics. Yes, the insights of the field can even help you lose weight.

The choices of our interviewees are varied, but the most popular book so far is Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. It's informative but also a great read.

    The best books on Behavioral Science, recommended by Nicholas Epley

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioral Science - Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum

    1

    Love at Goon Park
    by Deborah Blum

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioral Science - How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich

    2

    How We Know What Isn’t So
    by Thomas Gilovich

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioral Science - Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine

    3

    Delusions of Gender
    by Cordelia Fine

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioral Science - Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

    4

    Stumbling on Happiness
    by Daniel Gilbert

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioral Science - Nudge by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

    5

    Nudge
    by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

The best books on Behavioral Science, recommended by Nicholas Epley

What can we draw from behavioral science to help us better understand each other? Nicholas Epley, Professor of Behavioral Science and Faculty Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, recommends the five best books for learning about an interdisciplinary field that draws from psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology.

    The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature, recommended by Robert J Shiller

  • Read
    The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature - The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

    1

    The Theory of Moral Sentiments
    by Adam Smith

  • Read
    The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature - The Passions and the Interests by Albert Hirschman

    2

    The Passions and the Interests
    by Albert Hirschman

  • Read
    The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature - Nudge by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

    3

    Nudge
    by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

  • Read
    The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature - Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten The World Economy by Raghuram G Rajan

    4

    Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten The World Economy
    by Raghuram G Rajan

  • Read
    The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature - Winner-Take-All Politics by Jacob S Hacker and Paul Pierson

    5

    Winner-Take-All Politics
    by Jacob S Hacker and Paul Pierson

The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature, recommended by Robert J Shiller

“You have to understand people first before you can understand how to devise an economic system for them” argues Robert J Shiller, the Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate. He chooses five books that explore who we fundamentally are, as human beings, and how that will determine the shape of a successful capitalism.

    The best books on Behavioural Economics, recommended by Dan Ariely

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioural Economics - The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

    1

    The Invisible Gorilla
    by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioural Economics - Influence by Robert B Cialdini

    2

    Influence
    by Robert B Cialdini

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioural Economics - Nudge by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

    3

    Nudge
    by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioural Economics - Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

    4

    Mindless Eating
    by Brian Wansink

  • Read
    The best books on Behavioural Economics - The Person and the Situation by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett

    5

    The Person and the Situation
    by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett

The best books on Behavioural Economics, recommended by Dan Ariely

We can all be more aware of our surroundings and our decision-making process, says the professor of psychology and behavioural economics, Dan Ariely. He recommends five books to help us maximise our prosperity and well-being.

    The best books on Decision-Making, recommended by Jonah Lehrer

  • Read
    The best books on Decision-Making - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

    1

    Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
    by Charles Mackay

  • Read
    The best books on Decision-Making - Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman & Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky

    2

    Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
    by Daniel Kahneman & Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky

  • Read
    The best books on Decision-Making - How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich

    3

    How We Know What Isn’t So
    by Thomas Gilovich

  • Read
    The best books on Decision-Making - The Winner’s Curse by Richard Thaler

    4

    The Winner’s Curse
    by Richard Thaler

  • Read
    The best books on Decision-Making - Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

    5

    Predictably Irrational
    by Dan Ariely

The best books on Decision-Making, recommended by Jonah Lehrer

Behavioural economics is a very new field, but its insights have huge ramifications for our daily lives, including life-or-death decisions. Here, author Jonah Lehrer talks us through some of its most important works.

About

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand interviews, or five thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

Newsletter Contact us Privacy Policy Terms of Service

© Five Books 2021