One of society’s thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness. Richard Thaler Read Quote
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. Richard Thaler Read Quote
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. Richard Thaler Read Quote
Shopping for an annuity with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake can be daunting, even for an economist. Richard Thaler Read Quote
If we think that high marginal tax rates are bad because they distort incentives, the same is then true for tax subsidies. Richard Thaler Read Quote
I don’t think it says anywhere in the Bible that tithing should be calculated on a before-tax basis. Richard Thaler Read Quote
Most of us think that we are ‘better than average’ in most things. We are also ‘miscalibrated,’ meaning that our sense of the probability of events doesn’t line up with reality. When we say we are sure about a certain fact, for example, we may well be right only half the time. Richard Thaler Read Quote
It makes sense for social scientists to become more involved in policy because many of society’s most challenging problems are, in essence, behavioral. Richard Thaler Read Quote
One reason for high health care costs is that patients fail to follow their treatment regimen. Richard Thaler Read Quote
