"In the 70s and the 80s, you had this early explosion of behavioral economics led by people like Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler. And then 20 years ago was the Freakonomics phenomenon. So you had Steven Levitt, an economist, and Stephen Dubner, a journalist, who wrote a book that popularized all of this thinking that attempted to show the hidden side of everything, what truly motivates us as economic actors. And the field took off behind this basic tagline that conventional wisdom is wrong."
"I think it opened our eyes to a lot of phenomena that were not immediately clear. I think it also changed academia in some ways, that professors saw the success of Malcolm Gladwell's books, of Freakonomics and thought, "Well, wait a minute, I can do research that is also broadly relevant, that has popular appeal, and I can make a name for myself.""
Behavioral economics expanded from research in the 1970s and 1980s and later reached wide public attention through popularized examinations of hidden incentives and unexpected human motivations. Popularization made economic thinking more accessible, influenced corporate approaches to consumer behavior and management, and encouraged academics to pursue broadly relevant, publicly engaging research. The shift altered cultural perceptions of economics, prompted reflection on correct and incorrect claims, and raised methodological and ethical questions about research practices and interpretation of surprising findings.
Read at Harvard Business Review
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