Richard Thaler People Quotations

There is no doubt that these are real people making real choices for high stakes, and we rarely get to observe such pure decisions.

One simple step firms can take is make sure that people that are getting paid a lot of money, say more than a million or two, that a big chunk of that money is deferred. That's going to change the whole ballgame.

The money has to be deferred with what they call "clawback," which means they can get it back if I lose it all. So that guy making ten million a year selling credit default swaps, if we're going to keep five million of it in escrow for ten years, and with the right to go back and get it, if he starts losing money, then we're going to give people the right incentives not too take so much risk.

Everyone's lost a lot of money on their 401k plans. I've heard some people calling them 201k plans. So it's even more important to get people to be saving more for retirement. Behavioral economics has helped us learn a lot about how to do that.

"Save more tomorrow" is a nudge to help people do what they know they want to do, which is save more, but they can't bring themselves to save more now. Just like many of us are planning to go on diets next month, or maybe in two months, certainly not tonight.

If people just put away what's left at the end of the month, that's a recipe for failure.

Most people start claiming benefits within a year of when they become eligible, although benefits increase substantially if they wait.

I think the people who've been the most overconfident in our business in the last decade have been the people that called themselves risk managers.

If rather than setting the minimum balance as the lowest possible amount, so we keep people in debt for as long as possible, we raise the minimum payment and encourage people to pay off their credit cards, we're going to make less money, but we're going to have costumers that are more solvent.

Is there a market for somebody selling a credit card that helps people pay down their balances? I think the question is yes. But it would have to be sold by a bank that's really willing to invest in being a trusted partner with its consumers, because they will make less money on each consumer.

Recall that people like to do what most people think it is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do.

People exaggerate their own skills. they are optimistic about their prospects and overconfident about their guesses, including which managers to pick.

Most economists, including me, agree that longevity insurance would make sense for a lot of people.

There's no reason to think that markets always drive people to what's good for them.

The lesson from behavioral economics is that people only save if it's automatic.

My mantra is if you want to help people accomplish some goal, make it easy.