2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Richard H. Thaler. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 9 October 2017.

The citation

The citation reads: "for his contributions to behavioural economics".

The laureate

Richard H. Thaler was born in 1945 in East Orange, the United States, and is affiliated with the University of Chicago, Chicago.

Why it matters

Thaler showed how human traits such as limited self-control shape economic decisions, and helped develop the idea of "nudges" to encourage better choices.

The prize

The prize is worth 9 million Swedish kronor. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895. Strictly, this award is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It was established by the Swedish central bank in 1968, but is presented alongside the Nobel Prizes.