Quotes from Richard Thaler

There's a reason why start-ups, especially disruptive start-ups - like Google or Amazon or Uber - are full of young people. That's because young people are not as wedded to the old fashioned ways of doing things.

If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun.

The lesson for businesses is you are dealing with real people. Those are your customers, those are your employees, those are your bosses, and the better you understand how real people tick, the more successfully you will be able to accomplish your goals.

If there is one thing that most economists agree about in the realm of tax policy, it is that it's best to broaden the base of any tax, all else being equal. That means minimizing the number of deductions and exclusions from taxable income in order to lower marginal rates and reduce distortions.

Many problems are so complex that even if we had the money to fix them, we wouldn't know how to do it. Fixing inner-city schools, reducing obesity, creating peace in the Middle East are just a few examples.

We all need a lot of humility, and especially about the economy.

God did not say that you should be able to borrow one hundred percent of the price of a house.

Even a mother - Jewish or not - can't worry about everything. So it is important that we limit our worries to real as opposed to imaginary risks.

Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief for others is simply elitist.

High school seniors should receive help in how to think about a student loan and how to make sure that the education bought with the loan offers good prospects for repayment.

We humans actually need help controlling our impulses - nudges.

If you're trading individual securities, you're almost certainly making a mistake. Because most professional managers can't outperform their benchmarks, and there's little reason to think that individuals can.

How can government reduce the frequency and the severity of future catastrophes? Companies that have the potential to create significant harm must be required to pay for the costs they inflict, either before or after the fact. Economists agree on this general approach. The problem is in putting such a policy into effect.

If you're not putting enough away for emergencies or retirement, making commitments in advance, such as signing up for payroll withholding, can help.

Signing up to be an organ donor should be at least as easy as downloading a song to your iPhone.

Whenever I'm asked to autograph a copy of 'Nudge,' the book I wrote with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor, I sign it, 'Nudge for good.' Unfortunately, that is meant as a plea, not an expectation.

We behavioralists differ from our more traditional brethren in the way we characterize agents in the economy.

It's hard to have any idea of how much money is enough to finance an appropriate lifestyle in retirement. But if a lump sum is translated into a monthly income, it's much easier to determine whether you have enough put away to afford to stop working.

Don't get trapped by looking at what the price was that you paid for some stock originally.

One reason for high health care costs is that patients fail to follow their treatment regimen.

Traditional economics is based on imaginary creatures sometimes referred to as 'Homo economicus.' I call them Econs for short. Econs are amazingly smart and are free of emotion, distraction or self-control problems. Think Mr. Spock from 'Star Trek.'

Pundits are no better at forecasting election outcomes than they would be at predicting the final path of a hurricane. Smart pundits should consider either abandoning this activity or consulting with the geeks before rendering their guesses.

I have an agent, John Brockman, who is an agent to many academic authors like Dan Gilbert and Steven Pinker, and he's very good at conning academics into writing books. He pulled this trick on me.

The more we turn down questionable offers like trip insurance and scrutinize 'one month' trials, the less incentive companies will have to use such schemes.