RICHARD THALER

One guy cannot create a field, but one person can get others thinking.

People are nicer than economists give us credit for. The economists cannot understand why people would work long and hard to clean up a community after a hurricane. … Most economists don’t have any interest in or understanding of psychology.

You can't make evidence-based policy decisions without evidence.

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.

It's essential that we understand things like the free-rider problem, but we also need to understand that, fortunately, humans are a little nicer than economists give them credit for. Some people actually leave money at roadside fruit stands; some people give money to NPR so we can listen to it.

The sad truth is that many behavioral economists know very little about psychology.

I think behavioral economists don't have any more of an explanation about the rise of Trump than anyone else.

It makes sense for social scientists to become more involved in policy because many of society's most challenging problems are, in essence, behavioral.

Lotteries are just one way to provide positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued.

Behavioral economics offers a plausible explanation for overreactions by the market. For example, a long period of bad performance can lead to stereotyping.

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

One of society's thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness.

If the government can manage to collect and release personal information in a secure and useful way, so can private companies, which will empower consumers to become better shoppers.

Payroll savings plans are vital because they are essentially the only way that middle-class Americans reliably save for retirement.

Sunk costs? We pay too much attention to them.

We could all use more coaching.

I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible.

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.

When it comes to my health, I would rather my doctor base her decisions on science rather than what she, or some lawyer, thinks will stand up in court.

Although the United States cannot unilaterally lower the price of oil, it can reduce its consumption by using oil more efficiently and by developing alternative sources of fuel.

Real people have trouble balancing their checkbooks, much less calculating how much they need to save for retirement; they sometimes binge on food, drink, or high-definition televisions. They are more like Homer Simpson than Mr. Spock.

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.

Fortunately, economists open to new ways of thinking are finding novel ways to use supposedly irrelevant factors to make the world a better place.

If you want to encourage some activity, make it easy.

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.