Fireside Chat: Richard Thaler and Gus O'Donnell

On 27th September Chicago Booth and PBE hosted a fireside chat with Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler, the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Lord Gus O’Donnell, Chair of Trustees of Pro Bono Economics.

Their wide ranging conversation covered how various behavioural economic concepts might be applied to policy making, financial planning, healthcare, climate change, AI and pensions (as well as golf, sports and the good life). 

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About Richard Thaler

Richard Thaler is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Professor Thaler was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 2017 and is considered one of the founding fathers of behavioural economics. As co-author of the best-selling book Nudge (2008), he uses concepts of behavioural economics to tackle many of society’s major problems. His research focuses on the intersectionality between behavioural economics, finance and the psychology of decision making, challenging the standard economic assumption that everyone in the economy is rational and selfish.

About Gus O’Donnell

Lord Gus O’Donnell is a former British senior civil servant and economist, who between 2005 and 2011 served as the Cabinet Secretary, the highest official in the British Civil Service. From joining the Treasury as an economist, and serving in the British Embassy in Washington, involved with the IMF and World Bank, he became Permanent Secretary of the Treasury in 2002. In 2010 he oversaw the creation of the Behavioural insights, known as the nudge unit, in the Cabinet Office. This idea was proposed to David Cameron when he was leader of the Opposition by Richard Thaler. After leaving the civil service in 2011, and being appointed a Life Peer in 2012, he has been involved in many areas: the chair of Frontier Economics, a visiting professor to the London School of Economics and University College London, a trustee of the Economist Group, a strategic adviser to the chief executive of Toronto Dominion Bank, on the main board of Brookfield asset management, President of the Council of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, and Chair of Trustees of Pro Bono Economics.