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 author, Jonah Leher, recommends his best books on decision-making.

The choices of our interviewees are varied, but both Shiller and Ariely choose Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler.