Richard Thaler is a controversial Nobel prize winner – but a deserving one

The US academic’s behavioural research shows how to focus economics more decisively on real and important problems• What is behavioural economics? The winner of this year’s Nobel prize in economics, Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, is a controversial choice. Thaler is known for his lifelong pursuit of behavioural economics (and its subfield, behavioural finance), which is the study of economics (and finance) from a psychological perspective. For some in the professio