Americans Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith shared the 2002 Nobel economics prize today for work on how psychology affects people's buying decisions, and for developing laboratory experiments in economics.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that Kahneman, 68, and Smith, 75, will share the prestigious $1 million prize for groundbreaking studies beyond the traditional assumption of rational human economic behaviour driven by self interest.
Smith, born in Kansas, is a professor of economics and law at George Mason University in Virginia. 'He has developed an array of experimental methods, setting standards for what constitutes a reliable laboratory experiment,' the academy said.
Smith spearheaded 'wind-tunnel tests' where trials of new market designs, such as a deregulated electricity market, are carried out in a lab before being implemented in practice.
Kahneman, born in Tel Aviv, is also a citizen of Israel. He is a professor of public affairs at Princeton University and the first Israeli to win the Nobel economics prize.
'Kahneman has integrated insights from psychology into economics, thereby laying the foundation for a new field of research,' the academy said. He discovered how human judgment may take shortcuts that systematically depart from basic principles of probability.
