The government employs scientists of many varieties in technical capacities, from estimating the environmental toxicity of a chemical to the structural soundness of a bridge. But when it comes to forming policies, these scientists and, especially, behavioral scientists are rarely at the table with the lawyers and the economists. Richard Thaler Read Quote
Academia does not provide many opportunities for immediate gratification. You work for two years on a project, it takes two more years to get it published, and then you start hoping someone might read it. Richard Thaler Read Quote
I have an agent, John Brockman, who is an agent to many academic authors like Dan Gilbert and Steven Pinker, and he’s very good at conning academics into writing books. He pulled this trick on me. Richard Thaler Read Quote
The lesson for businesses is you are dealing with real people. Those are your customers, those are your employees, those are your bosses, and the better you understand how real people tick, the more successfully you will be able to accomplish your goals. Richard Thaler Read Quote
There’s a reason why start-ups, especially disruptive start-ups – like Google or Amazon or Uber – are full of young people. That’s because young people are not as wedded to the old fashioned ways of doing things. Richard Thaler Read Quote
In some ways, the finding that financial education doesn’t provide long-term payoffs is hardly surprising. After all, how much do you remember from your high school chemistry class? Unless you use chemistry at work, you probably don’t recall much about ionic bonding. Richard Thaler Read Quote
High school seniors should receive help in how to think about a student loan and how to make sure that the education bought with the loan offers good prospects for repayment. Richard Thaler Read Quote
Arthur Laffer’s idea, that lowering taxes could increase revenues, was logically correct. If tax rates are high enough, then people will go to such lengths to avoid them that cutting taxes can increase revenues. What he was wrong about was in thinking that income tax rates were already so high in the 1970s that cutting them would raise revenues. Richard Thaler Read Quote
The wealth in many large estates has never been taxed because it is largely in the form of unrealized – therefore untaxed – capital gains. Richard Thaler Read Quote
