Winner's Curse

Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard H. Thaler challenges traditional economic paradigms and reveals the many paradoxes about human behavior and our transaction-based culture in this "interesting and entertaining" (The Wall Street Journal) work.

While the rationale behind economics always seems to be at the forefront of political and institutional life, many economic theories in relation to consumer behavior have not been studied in detail. Here, in The Winner's Curse, Richard Thaler challenges today's accepted economic wisdom by revealing many of the anomalies that abound even in simple economic transactions. He presents literate, challenging, and often funny examples of such variances 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.