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Richard H. Thaler
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The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life Paperback – January 10, 1994

by Richard H. Thaler (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 67 ratings
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In this book, Nobel Prize–winning economist 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.

An ebook edition is available from The Free Press at leading on-line booksellers.

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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Princeton University Press
  4. Publication date
    January 10, 1994
  5. Dimensions
    6.1 x 0.64 x 9.21 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780691019345
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0691019345
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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"Richard H. Thaler, Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics"

"By unraveling a series of real-world puzzles with philosophical and practical implications, Thaler illuminates some fairly abstruse ideas in an entertaining way.... The best minds in economics today, as Thaler's provocative book suggests, are trying to supplement [insights into markets and prices] with a broader understanding of what makes people tick."---Christopher Farrell, Business Week

"Richard Thaler ... stylishly recounts empirical findings that skewer hitherto sheltered economic beliefs."---Lola L. Lopes, Contemporary Psychology

About the Author

Richard H. Thaler, the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics, is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0691019347
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; 59688th edition (January 10, 1994)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780691019345
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691019345
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 0.64 x 9.21 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 67 ratings

About the author

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Richard H. Thaler

Richard H. Thaler

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Richard H. Thaler is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business where he director of the Center for Decision Research. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research where he co-directs the behavioral economics project. Professor Thaler's research lies in the gap between psychology and economics. He is considered a pioneer in the fields of behavioral economics and finance. He is the author of numerous articles and the books Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics; Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (with Cass Sunstein), The Winner's Curse, and Quasi Rational Economics and was the editor of the collections: Advances in Behavioral Finance, Volumes 1 and 2. He also wrote a series of articles in the Journal of Economics Perspectives called: "Anomalies". He is one of the rotating team of economists who write the Economic View column in the Sunday New York Times.

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4.1 out of 5 stars
67 global ratings

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Customers find the book interesting and worth reading. However, they find the pacing slow and the math heavy.

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Customers enjoy the book. They find it worthwhile, though dense.

"rally enjoy Dick Thaler's books, this is excellent." Read more

"Worth reading... and reading again 20 years later..." Read more

"Good but dense reading..." Read more

"Very interesting..." Read more

3 customers mention "Pacing"0 positive3 negative

Customers find the book's pacing slow. They say it's dense and heavy on math, which they enjoy at times but not others.

"This book is a little heavy on the math, which I enjoyed at times but at other times felt really lost and not too eager to go look up the referenced..." Read more

"Good book but it is somewhat dense for an interested reader that’s not an economist...." Read more

"This is a dense, academic book. It is nowhere as accessible as Thaler's other books. This book, however, is where it all started...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Steve B
    5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading... and reading again 20 years later
    Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Read this book 20 years ago and loved it then.... just bought a copy for my nephew.
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  • Joel
    4.0 out of 5 stars Best book out there in the Popular economics genre
    Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    This book is a little heavy on the math, which I enjoyed at times but at other times felt really lost and not too eager to go look up the referenced journal articles for the full explanation on the formulas used.

    The other benefit of all the math is it makes all the points that Thaler raises in this book much more scientifically based. This book isn't pseudoscience.

    That said, it's not like this book is a math textbook. In the style of Freakonomics, (although the Winner's Curse was written about a decade earlier) Thaler just jumps from one cool behavioral economics example to the next.

    The thing from this book that stuck with me the most was the chapter on positive expected value lotteries. Apparently, they pop up every so often. Unfortunatley you need a billion dollar bankroll to take advantage of them, and I don't think Thaler included taxes when he was doing the expected value calculations, so they might not really exist at all.
    8 people found this helpful
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  • Bernardo Sacchini
    3.0 out of 5 stars Good but dense reading
    Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Good book but it is somewhat dense for an interested reader that’s not an economist. I think there are better Thaler books out there that provide similar learning
    One person found this helpful
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  • BLR
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    rally enjoy Dick Thaler's books, this is excellent.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Ryan Coleman
    2.0 out of 5 stars by an economist, for an economist
    Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2004
    Verified Purchase
    as an amateur economist grown increasingly dissatisfied w/ the failures of available theories, i was hopeful that this book would expound more on why markets fail. in some ways it did (in a very drab and boring language), although its coverage of financial markets (my interest) was all too brief and incomplete---the coverage of losers' outperformance of winners in equities was by far (IMHO) the best section of the book, but as good as that section was, the coverage of foreign exchange fluctuations was a failure. ---soros did a much better job of this.
    there is some good material in this book, and i would give it 3 stars as a result, but the writing style makes it simply too inaccessible for the average reader. better financial market focus can be found in "reminisces of a stock operator" and "alchemy of finance", which really were accidental breakthroughs in behavioral finance (particularly the former--a gem of a book).
    rhyno
    23 people found this helpful
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  • JoshK
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting
    Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2006
    Verified Purchase
    It gives you a great overview of some of the strange inconsitencies in human behavior. It is more than just a finance book and has many interesting stories that you can talk about with friends later.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Stephen M. Bainbridge
    4.0 out of 5 stars Useful introduction to a controversial field
    Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2000
    As with any model claiming predictive power, economics rests on a theory of human behavior-specifically, rational choice theory, which posits decisionmakers who are autonomous individuals who make rational choices that maximize their satisfactions. Critics of economics have long complained that rational choice is, at best, an incomplete account of human behavior. The traditional response to that criticism is that rationality is simply an abstraction developed as a useful model of predicting the behavior of large numbers of people and, as such, does not purport to describe real people embedded in a real social order. A theory is properly judged by its predictive power with respect to the phenomena it purports to explain, not by whether it is a valid description of an objective reality. Indeed, important and significant hypotheses often have assumptions that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality. Accordingly, the relevant question to ask about the assumptions of a theory is not whether they are descriptively realistic, for they never are, but whether they are sufficiently good approximations for the purpose in hand. Until quite recently, empirical research tended to confirm that the rational choice model of human behavior is a good first approximation of how large numbers of people are likely to behave in exchange transactions.
    Over the last 10-15 years, however, a new school of economic analysis has emerged that challenges the rational choice model precisely on its predictive power. Empirical and laboratory work by cognitive psychologists and experimental economists has identified a growing number of anomalies in which behavior appears to systematically depart from that predicted by rational choice. Some of the more important examples of these decisionmaking biases include: ** Herd behavior: Why do lemmings leap off that cliff in Norway? What explains fads like Beanie Babies and Pokémon? Herd behavior occurs when a decisionmaker imitates the actions of others, while ignoring his own information and judgment with regard to the merits of the underlying decision. ** The status quo bias: All else being equal, decisionmakers favor maintaining the status quo rather than switching to some alternative state. The status quo bias can lead to market failure where decisionmakers' preference for the status quo perpetuates suboptimal practices. The extent to which behavioral economics calls into question more traditional modes of economic analysis remains sharply contested. At the very least, however, it seems clear that attention must be paid to the possibility that behavioral analysis sheds light on policy issues.
    Richard Thaler is one of the foremost behavioral economists. In this (relatively) accessible introduction to this emerging literature, he collects (and revises) a series of articles he wrote for the Journal of Economic Perspectives. As such, there book reads more like an anthology than a coherent whole. Yet, each of the chapters is highly instructive. More important for the general reader, while the selections are all highly rigorous, Thaler steers clear of the sort of recreational mathematics that plagues so much of modern economics. Of particular interest to lay readers, I suspect, will be the chapters on investing. Thaler offers a highly insightful analysis of the various anomalies in capital market behavior that appear to be inconsistent with the standard economic assumptions built into the efficient capital markets hypothesis and the capital asset pricing model. In sum, a useful introduction to the literature.
    83 people found this helpful
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  • Rolf Dobelli
    5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!
    Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2005
    We highly recommend this classic of economic literature, one of the first (more or less) accessible presentations of the evidence against economic rationality. Economists have assumed, conventionally, that economic choice rests on a foundation of rationality. For instance, economists tend to think that people will put the same value on two mathematically identical offers. Yet laboratory experiments have proven what everyday experience suggests: people are not quite rational. Author Richard H. Thaler, a founding father of behavioral economics, presents convincing exhibits to make the case that the assumption of economic rationality is an awfully big pill to swallow. Stylistically, his book strikes a neat balance between accessibility and obscurity. A reader will need a certain amount of schooling in economics and a great deal of patience with academic prose to wade through every word of every chapter, although the payoff is substantial. However, it is possible for the impatient reader to get the gist by reading the introduction, the first page or two of each chapter and the epilogue. And even that is eminently worthwhile.
    16 people found this helpful
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