咔咔的！“行为经济学”斩获2017诺贝尔经济学奖
瑞典皇家科学院宣布，将2017年诺贝尔经济学奖授予芝加哥大学金融和行为科学教授Richard H. Thaler，表彰其在行为经济学领域的贡献。
Richard H. Thaler
Thaler教授生于1945年，1974年获得美国罗彻斯特大学经济学博士学位，指导老师是Sherwin Rosen。主要研究领域是行为经济学、行为金融学与决策心理学。
评审委员会表示，泰勒将心理学的现实假设与经济的决策制定结合起来，通过探索有限的理性、社会偏好和缺乏自我控制的结果，他展现出这些人性特点对于个人决策以及市场结果的系统影响。
泰勒的贡献在于，对于个人决策存在着经济学和心理学的分析，他则在二者之间架起桥梁。他的实证研究发现和理论洞见，对于行为经济学新领域的创建和迅速扩张起到重要作用，也对许多经济研究和政策具有深远影响。
Thaler曾客串出演《大空头》，在电影中，他在拉斯维加斯的一家赌场，向人解释什么是“担保债务凭证”。其代表著作有《赢者的诅咒》和《准理性经济学》。另有和哈佛大学法学院教授卡斯·桑斯坦（Cass Sunstein ）合著的行为经济学类书籍《助推》(Nudge)。
Thaler认为，完全理性的经济人不可能存在，人们在现实生活中的各种经济行为必然会受到各种“非理性”的影响。很多从传统经济学角度看来是“错误”的行为，经常被忽视，但往往正是这些行为导致了那些“看起来很美”的决策最终失效乃至酿成恶果。
比如，你会不会冒着大风雪去看球赛？按照传统经济学原理，看球赛的乐趣与大风雪的危险二者相比，理性的人都应该待在家里。但实际情况并非如此，如果早已买了票，很多人都愿意冒着风雪去看球赛。这种与传统经济学原理相悖的现象在日常生活中相当普遍。
比如，我们都知道及时止损的重要性，但大部分股民都会犹豫不决、一拖再拖，甚至宁愿在“低位”追加投资以求摊平成本，以至于深套其中无力解脱。行为经济学提醒人们要学会忽略“沉没成本”(花出去的钱)，沉没成本和机会成本是交织在一起的，我们需要设立一个心理账户，一旦发现了一个行为问题，就可以采取另一种行为作为解决办法。
行为经济学非常重视“直觉”的相关研究，它注意到大众经常凭借直觉而不是理性来做决定。如果经济决策者将主体对象模式化，设定成大家都是理性人，这就可能使得决策出发点与实际效果大相径庭甚至背道而驰。
行为经济学家致力于自我控制问题的研究，同时认为，人类仍然需要帮助才能做出更准确的判断和更好的决策。Thaler的《助推》主张自由家长制的做法，即允许国家和其他机构“推动”人们做决策。其中两点很重要：一是决策的科学性；第二点更重要，即选择的自由。要保证这两点，确实很难。传统经济学把人=理性人，这只是一个理想目标，不过希望每个人都能以较少的代价去无限靠近。
2002年的诺贝尔经济学奖发给了心理学家卡尼曼，他带给人们一个新的理论——“前景理论”。瑞典皇家科学院称，卡尼曼因为“将来自心理研究领域的综合洞察力应用在了经济学当中，尤其是在不确定情况下的人为判断和决策方面作出了突出贡献”。
2012年度诺贝尔经济学奖颁给了对市场主体“配对”问题做研究的两位美国学者。评委会主席、新宏观经济学创始人克鲁赛尔（Per Krusell）评价：“此次经济学奖中，金钱不再是研究活动的主角，尽管其确与人息息相关，但并非生活的全部，而人成为了主体。”
Press Release: The Prize in Economic Sciences 2017
9 October 2017
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017 to
Richard H. Thaler
University of Chicago, IL, USA
"for his contributions to behavioural economics"
Integrating economics with psychology
Richard H. Thaler has incorporated psychologically realistic assumptions into analyses of economic decision-making. By exploring the consequences of limited rationality, social preferences, and lack of self-control, he has shown how these human traits systematically affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.
Limited rationality: Thaler developed the theory of mental accounting,explaining how people simplify financial decision-making by creating separate accounts in their minds, focusing on the narrow impact of each individual decision rather than its overall effect. He also showed how aversion to losses can explain why people value the same item more highly when they own it than when they don't, a phenomenon called the endowment effect. Thaler was one of the founders of the field of behavioural finance, which studies how cognitive limitations influence financial markets.
Social preferences: Thaler's theoretical and experimental research onfairness has been influential. He showed how consumers' fairness concerns may stop firms from raising prices in periods of high demand, but not in times of rising costs. Thaler and his colleagues devised the dictator game, an experimental tool that has been used in numerous studies to measure attitudes to fairness in different groups of people around the world.
Lack of self-control: Thaler has also shed new light on the old observation that New Year's resolutions can be hard to keep. He showed how to analyse self-control problems using a planner-doer model, which is similar to the frameworks psychologists and neuroscientists now use to describe the internal tension between long-term planning and short-term doing. Succumbing to shortterm temptation is an important reason why our plans to save for old age, or make healthier lifestyle choices, often fail. In his applied work, Thaler demonstrated how nudging – a term he coined – may help people exercise better self-control when saving for a pension, as well in other contexts.
In total, Richard Thaler's contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making. His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioural economics, which has had a profound impact on many areas of economic research and policy.
More information, please visit the Nobel website: https://www.nobelprize.org
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来源：中国金融四十人论坛、青塔、诺贝尔官方网站等