![]() ![]() Immediately and inevitably nicknamed the “Nudge Unit”, this team has played a quiet but important role, importing many of the findings of Thaler and his tribe to the everyday business of government. After convincing some of the bright young things around David Cameron, Thaler helped to set up and run the Behavioural Insights Team in Downing Street after Cameron’s entry in 2010 (disclosure: I played a small role here). Both have influenced public policy in the US, and even more so in the UK. Barro agreed.” (It is of course very clever of Thaler to share this story.)Īlong with Cass Sunstein, Thaler became an international public intellectual in 2008, with the publication of their bestselling book Nudge. Thaler recounts a dispute at an academic conference with the orthodox economist Robert Barro: “I said that the difference between our models was that he assumed that the agents in his model were as smart as he was, and I assumed they were as dumb as I am. He does not come across as someone lecturing others about their shortcomings, because they feel like his shortcomings too. But he is also the perfect spokesman for an approach that has come to be known as behavioural economics. Thaler is a brilliant scholar, endlessly curious, empirically inclined and public spirited. ![]()
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