Dan Ariely, the Behavioural Economist

I read for the first time about Dan Ariely in Economic Times, in Spiritual Quotient / Cosmic Uplink. The behavioural scienist. Wikipedia has a page about him. Also , his research publication, nearly 6 of them, are linked there, available in PDF version.

Here's what wiki says about him.
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Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group. Although he is a professor of marketing with no training in economics, he is considered to be one of the leading behavioral economists. Currently, Ariely is serving as a Visiting Professor at the Duke University, Fuqua School of Business where he is teaching a course based upon his findings in Predictably Irrational.

Dan Ariely grew up in Israel after birth in New York. He served in the Israeli army and when 18 suffered third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body from an accidental magnesium flare explosion during training.[1]

Ariely recovered and went on to graduate from Tel Aviv University and received a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day.

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Selected publications
Try it, you'll like it: The influence of expectation, consumption, and revelation on preferences for beer
Dishonesty in Everyday Life and Its Policy Implications
Placebo Effects of Marketing Actions: Consumers May Get What They Pay For
Tom Sawyer and the Construction of Value
Effort for Payment: A Tale of Two markets
Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment
Seeing sets: Representation by Statistical Properties
Controlling the Information Flow: Effects on Consumers' Decision Making and Preferences
Coherent Arbitariness: Stable demand curves without stable preferences
Combining experiences over time: the effects of duration, intensity changes and on-line measurements on retrospective pain evaluations
Please see all publications

His famous book, ' predictably irrational', has a seperate website.

http://www.predictablyirrational.com/

Amazon link for his book , " Predictably Irrational " , is here.

http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/006135323X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208890191&sr=1-1

" Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice, as well as economic and educational policy. Ariely's intelligent, exuberant style and thought-provoking arguments make for a fascinating, eye-opening read. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. "