There are many ways, all easy and enjoyable, to appreciate the work of Richard Thaler, the economist who this week was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. If you do nothing else, and know nothing else about his work, simply read his New York Times column from two years ago on why normal people are not like Mr Spock.
Know that his column is an elegant snapshot of his wit, gift of communication and life’s work in economics. A founder of the field of behavioural economics, his mission has been to analyse economic decisions as real people make them. (The Times has a curated page with a selection of some of his other newspaper columns.)
For more depth, you could do worse than reading the Nobel committee’s popular information paper and the scientific background paper, which are entirely accessible. They show Thaler’s work as organised around three related concepts: bounded rationality, bounded willpower and bounded self-interest.