This book challenges constructively the conventional wisdom that behavioral economics should be viewed primarily as being about "nudge"-based policies and how choices are affected by "supposedly irrelevant factors" and bias-inducing heuristics. Its author began studying behavioral economics in the mid-1970s at the University of Cambridge, inspired by existing behavioral contributions of which most modern behavioral economists are largely oblivious. The intellectual journey that followed le...

This fascinating book is both an intellectual autobiography and a self-help career guide for academic economists. It tells, in a good-humoured way, a cautionary tale about the career arc of its recently-retired author, set against the backdrop of an evolving university environment that increased the challenges faced by academic economists who deviate from the mainstream. It is a deeply reflective, tell-all account, in which the author does not hold back from analysing his own role in how h...

This book is unique among modern contributions to behavioral economics in presenting a grand synthesis between the kind of behavioral economics popularized by Richard Thaler, earlier approaches such as those of the 1978 Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary economics from Veblen and Marshall through to neo-Schumpeterian thinking. The synthesis employs a complex adaptive systems approach to how people think, the lifestyles they build, and how new production...