Charlie Munger said "if economics isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?"

A weird bastard child of ideology and mathematics.

note that an ideology on its own is not bad (or necessarily good). it's being ideological--adhering to an ideology against any and all evidence--that's bad. humanity, including science, economics, the arts, etc., is driven by ideology, ideas that take hold because of a tantalizing kernel of truth in them. progress (and regress) happens on the back of ideology.

the rational actor at the center of economics is an ideological construct that we act to always maximize our economic return. how we adhere, and the system adheres, to that ideal has been the focus of a significant strain of economic thought. behavioral economics is another ideological strain that focuses primarily on those deviations (perhaps as a dominant mode) rather than the adherences of the progenitor ideology.

About 10 years ago, I too, as a newbie-layman, started with "Predictably Irrational". I recall being similarly fascinated, and recommending it to anyone who'd listen to me. It's surely a gentler start to the field; and I concur with you on suggestions for deeper material.

Nudge is pretty easy reading from Thaler and Sunstein. Personally tough, I preferred his Misbehaving which goes into his history with the field. Way back when, I had a couple courses with Thaler when he was calling the field Behavioural Decision Theory.

Agreed - Misbehaving is a really interesting history of the development of the field, and the characters introduced along the way. I was also doing Thaler a dis-service, I find his writing to be far more page-turny than Kahneman or Sunstein.

> Misbehaving is a really interesting history of the development of the field

A Thaler-centric history. There are others...

(I have a copy of Misbehaving.)

Thanks for the 'Misbehaving' recommendation.