The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life

by Richard H. Thaler

Overview

Winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Richard Thaler challenges the received economic wisdom by revealing many of the paradoxes that abound even in the most painstakingly constructed transactions. He presents literate, challenging, and often funny examples of such anomalies as why the winners at auctions are often the real losers—they pay too much and suffer the "winner's curse"—why gamblers bet on long shots at the end of a losing day, why shoppers will save on one appliance only to pass up the identical savings on another, and why sports fans who wouldn't pay more than $200 for a Super Bowl ticket wouldn't sell one they own for less than $400. He also demonstrates that markets do not always operate with the traplike efficiency we impute to them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451697872
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	06/26/2012
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Richard H. Thaler received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Decision Research. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research where he co-directs their behavioral economics project. He is the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (with Cass Sunstein) and the author of Quasi Rational Economics. He is also one in a rotating team of economists who writes for the New York Times "Economic View" column.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

2 Cooperation

3 The Ultimatum Game

4 Interindustry Wage Differentials

5 The Winner's Curse

6 The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias

7 Preference Reversals

8 Intertemporal Choice

9 Savings, Fungibility, and Mental Accounts

10 Pari-mutuel Betting Markets

11 Calendar Effects in the Stock Market

12 A Mean Reverting Walk Down Wall Street

13 Closed-End Mutual Funds

14 Foreign Exchange

15 Epilogue

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

By unraveling a series of real-world puzzles with philosophical and practical implications, Thaler illuminates some fairly abstruse ideas in an entertaining way.... The best minds in economics today, as Thaler's provocative book suggests, are trying to supplement [insights into markets and prices] with a broader understanding of what makes people tick.
— Christopher Farrell

BusinessWeek

Richard Thaler ... stylishly recounts empirical findings that skewer hitherto sheltered economic beliefs.
— Lola L. Lopes

Contemporary Psychology

By unraveling a series of real-world puzzles with philosophical and practical implications, Thaler illuminates some fairly abstruse ideas in an entertaining way.... The best minds in economics today, as Thaler's provocative book suggests, are trying to supplement [insights into markets and prices] with a broader understanding of what makes people tick.
— Christopher Farrell

Business Week

By unraveling a series of real-world puzzles with philosophical and practical implications, Thaler illuminates some fairly abstruse ideas in an entertaining way.... The best minds in economics today, as Thaler's provocative book suggests, are trying to supplement [insights into markets and prices] with a broader understanding of what makes people tick.

BusinessWeek - Christopher Farrell

Richard Thaler ... stylishly recounts empirical findings that skewer hitherto sheltered economic beliefs.

Contemporary Psychology - Lola L. Lopes

Richard H. Thaler, Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics

"By unraveling a series of real-world puzzles with philosophical and practical implications, Thaler illuminates some fairly abstruse ideas in an entertaining way.... The best minds in economics today, as Thaler's provocative book suggests, are trying to supplement [insights into markets and prices] with a broader understanding of what makes people tick."--Christopher Farrell, Business Week

"Richard Thaler ... stylishly recounts empirical findings that skewer hitherto sheltered economic beliefs."--Lola L. Lopes, Contemporary Psychology

From the Publisher