Uri Gneezy
Breathing Life Into Economics
Intro
Uri Gneezy is an economist, behavioral scientist, innovative strategist, entrepreneur, professor and author of the critically acclaimed book,The Why Axis. He is particularly interested in the ways habits are formed and the effectiveness of incentives.1 He relies on experimental economics to better understand real-life behavior, which has led his work to more closely align with behavioral economics than traditional economics. Early on, Gneezy understood that while economic theories were useful, they often failed to explain real human behavior. Instead of trying to prove or test theories, Gneezy begins his work by observing behavior and then coming up with questions that the field of economics has not adequately addressed.2 His simple empirical demonstrations show the power of cognitive biases and the intersection between the human psyche and behavior.3 Uri Gneezy is often accredited as one of the leading figures of behavioral economics, especially when it comes to innovative thinking and experimental economics.4 His academic research spans various disciplines and continues to challenge the social sciences to more accurately depict real-life behavior.4 Gneezy understands that for economic principles to be effective, they must take psychological matters into account.
Here’s the big takeaway: if you want people to adopt new behaviors, the best tool is a one-two punch of social norms and pricing, which work as complements and build on each other.
- Uri Gneezy in The Why Axis
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
