Richard Thaler’s latest book is essentially an autobiographical account of how the dismal science (economics) became somewhat less dismal and significantly more of a science, with some emphasis on the particular role that he played in that process. Thaler covers several heuristics and biases which are innate to the process of human reasoning, and shows how a better understanding of these shortfalls illuminate various economic phenomena.
He also explains, in an aside, why being a quantitative analyst will invariably suck:
(I had come to this conclusion independently, after being beaten senseless by it for a few years.)
If you consider yourself a skeptic, and you’ve any interest in how markets work, you really should give this book a go. It’s not every day that someone tells a true story of creeping rationality this eloquently or persuasively.
