Rankings / Candidate
George Loewenstein
Carnegie Mellon University · Behavioral
Photo: MeJudice, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Currently #11, tier Field, score 14.3, named by 1 source.Score history: 100.0, 25.0, 14.3
The work. Intertemporal choice, the hot-cold empathy gap, projection bias, and building behavioral economics into a research program at Carnegie Mellon.
The case for. Much of what people mean by behavioral economics traces to his papers on visceral influences and present bias. He is a co-founder of the field in the plain sense.
The case against. Thaler took the behavioral prize in 2017, the year Loewenstein was named, and the committee rarely doubles back within a decade. Output spread across psychology and economics journals also hurts.
The KmikeyM angle. The hot-cold empathy gap is the reason shareholders exist: cold-state voters decide what a hot-state Mike is allowed to do.
What the sources say
- Clarivate alumni (prior years) named George Loewenstein: named in 2017: for pioneering research in behavioral economics and in neuroeconomics (heat 100) Preseason: the Clarivate alumni pool