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

Richard H. Thaler

Jun 2012 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

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.

Ratings and reviews

After Misbehaving, I thought this would be a similar read, but unfortunately it was not. Made it through about 8 or 9 chapters before I started skimming. It's more a preference thing for me though... I'm sure many others have and would enjoy this book.

I hoped histories of lottery winners that waste everything.a real disappointment.

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.