More or Less – The Winners Curse
In the latter part of the 20th century, a pioneering group of economists started shaking up their academic field.
These “behavioural economists” used findings from experimental psychology and everyday activities to challenge the prevailing view that human beings were rational decision-makers – acting in predictable ways to maximise their wealth.
One of those pioneers was Richard Thaler, who noted down some of these “anomalies” in a column in the 1980s, which was turned into a book – The Winner’s Curse – first published in 1992. His work also won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2017.
More than 30 years on, he has returned to that book, publishing a new, updated version with co-author Alex Imas that examines whether those anomalies in rational thinking have stood the test of time.
