Nudge,nudge...wink, wanker - behavioural economics

This smug looking well fed, grey haired white man and chosen advisor to President elect Obama is Richard H. Thaler (b. 12th Sept 1945)he is is the theorist behind the juvenile concepts pushed in the dreamy eyries of academe called behavioral economics / finance. He has promoted these insane nostrum along with Daniel Kahneman and is is coauthor, with Cass R. Sunstein, of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale University Press, 2008).

Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for hemselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice.

Amazon review - 'This book is terrific. It will change the way you think, not only about the world around you and some of its bigger problems, but also about yourself.' --Michael Lewis author of The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game and Liar's Poker

Thaler started out at Case Western Reserve University in 1967 with a BA . At the University of Rochester, he received his M.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1974.

Floating in the world of movers and shaklers at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, he must have bumped into Obama . He is an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His academic record is impresive but seems l to lack ony business experience of any value. He has previously taught at Cornell University and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Thaler presides as an in-house expert who regularly consults with Barack Obama's top economic advisor for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, Austan Goolsbee .

Thaler has also organized a series of behavioral finance seminars along with Robert Shiller, another behavioral finance expert over at Yale School of Management.

Thaler gained some attention in the field of economics for publishing a regular column in the Journal of Economic Perspectives from 1987 to 1990 titled Anomalies, in which he documented individual instances of economic behavior that seemed to violate traditional microeconomic theory.

Thaler also is the founder of an asset management firm that enables a select group of investors to capitalize on cognitive biases such as the endowment effect, loss aversion and status quo bias.(Fuller & Thaler Asset Management, Inc. is an institutional investment firm managing approximately $1.5 billion* in long-only and long/short equity assets. Founded in 1993, the firm is 100% controlled by key professionals. We are headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. )

Thaler has also written a number of books intended for a lay reader on the subject of behavioral finance, including Quasi-rational Economics and The Winner's Curse, the latter of which contains many of his Anomalies columns revised and adapted for a popular audience.

In one of his most recent papers together with three Dutch economists Thaler has analyzed the choices of contestants appearing in the popular TV game show Deal or No Deal and found support for behavioralists' claims of path-dependent risk attitudes.

Basically his crass belief is that economic behaviour can be "nudged" not necessarily by stock pickers in the financial press, tipsters on the sports pages but by ...say the careful placement o healthy and nutritional foods at the canteen checkout - ignoring the fact that profit pr sq foot determines placing the impulse buys at the check out not rational behaviour.

Anyway if you have the patience read the guff and choose for yourself from the management self help bookshelf at Wal Mart whe his books are handily stocked by the National Enquirer and Hello magazine.

With advisors like this, expect some really, really good ideas for resolving the problems of the US auto industry.