Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler and rising star economist Alex Imas explore behavioral economics in this fully updated edition of the seminal work The Winner's Curse Why do people cooperate with one another when they have no (selfish) motivation to do so? Why do we hold onto possessions of little value? And why is the winner of an auction so often disappointed? In the original 1992 version of The Winner's Curse, Richard Thaler introduced readers to behavioral economics, challenging the notion of traditional economics that people are selfish, rational optimizers and behave accordingly every time. Three decades later, Thaler has teamed up with economist Alex Imas to provide fresh insights in this fully updated edition. They revisit Thaler's original columns on economic anomalies, some written with collaborators like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and explore how these anomalies hold up today. Many anomalies remain, whether in households saving for retirement (or not), professional golfers putting for millions of dollars, or shoppers at large retail chains. In this era of meme stocks and Dogecoin, it is hard to defend the view that financial markets are highly efficient. The good news, however, is that they have gotten funnier. With both readability and rigor, The Winner's Curse is approachable for anyone with even a cursory understanding of economics, without oversimplifying so that experts cannot read it without cringing. In the final chapter, the authors reflect on the field's progress and future. Thaler and Imas offer an updated classic even more relevant today to understand the true nature of decision-making in the current economy.

Details

ISBN13: 9780141997711
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 352
Edition:
Publication Date: 03 Nov 2026
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.7(H)x12.9(L)x2.1(W)260
Weight (gm): 260

Author Biography

Richard H. Thaler (Author) Richard H. Thaler received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He is a distinguished service professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He is the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Cass Sunstein) and the author of Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. Alex O. Imas (Author) Alex O. Imas is Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago School's Booth School of Business. He is the recipient of the 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Review of Financial Studies Rising Scholar Award, the New Investigator Award from the Behavioral Science and Policy Association, the Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award from the Society of Judgment and Decision Making, the Distinguished CESifo Affiliate Award, and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Behavioral Economics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Reviews

It’s fun and nerdy in the best way, and I have no hesitation at recommending it -- Tim Harford, Financial Times Best Books of 2025
Thaler and Imas gleefully trash numerous central dogmas of modern-day economics and instead foreground how knee-jerk intuitions, fuzzy rules of thumb, and social pressure rule human decision-making. It’s a sophisticated discussion, complete with a few equations, but lay readers will enjoy the lucid prose and down-home conclusions. The result is an enlightening analysis of economic choice as a stubbornly flawed and human endeavor * Publisher's Weekly *
part of the canon of behavioral economics -- Greg Rosalsky * Planet Money, NPR *
contains a wealth of empirical evidence to describe how people deviate from the ideal theory presented in a narrative that is easily accessible to non-economists -- Matthew Lucky * Promarket *
This is everywhere now. It's in the meme stocks, the retail traders, sports betting, online casinos -- Alice Fulwood * Economist *
Shines a light on our cognitive biases ... and applies it to something that impacts all of our lives - markets, businesses, the way we conduct our own households -- Nick Kokonas, co-author of "Life, On the Line"
Revisits decades of behavioral insights that changed how we think about choice, cooperation and human nature itself -- Guy Kawasaki * Remarkable People *