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Finance and Economics
財經
Free exchange: Reasonable doubt
自由交流：合理的懷疑
Richard Thaler wins the Nobel prize for economic sciences
理查德·賽勒贏得諾貝爾經濟學獎
The credit-card bill arrives.
信用卡賬單到了。
You have enough money in a savings account to pay it off—the sensible thing to do, arithmetically speaking, since the interest rate on the credit-card balance far exceeds that earned on the savings.
你在儲蓄賬戶中有足夠的錢把賬單付清——從算術上來說，這是該做的合理之事，因為信用卡余額的利率遠遠超出儲蓄所得。
Yet you leave the savings untouched, and pay only as much of the bill as your current-account balance allows.
然而，你卻讓儲蓄不被觸及，僅支付你的常規賬戶余額允許你支付的那部分賬單。
What looks a daft choice to most economists makes perfect sense to Richard Thaler, who on October 9th was awarded the Nobel prize for economics for his work in behavioural economics.
對大多數經濟學家看起來來是愚蠢的選擇，對10月9日因其對行為經濟學的研究而榮獲諾貝爾經濟學獎的理查德·賽勒來說卻具有重大的意義。
Mr Thaler helped demonstrate how human reasoning diverges from that of the perfectly rational homo economicus used in most economic modelling.
賽勒促成了人類推理行為如何迥異于被用在大多數經濟學建模行為中的完全理性的經理人推理行為的闡釋。
The world, and the field of economics, is better for his contributions.
這個世界以及經濟學，因為他的貢獻而愈發美好。
Economists mostly recognise that normal people fall short of perfect rationality in day-to-day decision-making.
經濟學家大都承認，普通人在日常決策行為中缺乏完全理性。
Economic modelling requires simplification, however, and economists generally suppose that theories assuming people are well-informed and rational offer the best available account of economic activity.
然而，經濟學上的建模行為要求簡單化，同時經濟學家通常認為，假設人們已經被很好地告知的理論以及理性，給經濟行為提供了最好的可用賬戶。
Over time, however, scholars have built up an imposing list of the ways in which humans systematically refuse to behave as the models predict.
然而，長期以來，學界卻形成了一份堂堂正正的有關人類用以系統性地拒絕如模型所預期地那樣行為的方法的名單。
Economists such as Herb Simon (who won the Nobel in 1978) , Daniel Kahneman (2002) and Robert Shiller (2013) are celebrated for their contributions to this effort.
（1978年贏得諾貝爾獎的）赫伯·西蒙、（2002年獲獎的）丹尼爾·卡尼曼和（2013年獲獎的）羅伯特·席勒等經濟學家，已經因為他們對這方面嘗試的貢獻而為人稱道。
But perhaps more than any other scholar, Mr Thaler lifted behavioural economics to prominence, and helped put its lessons into practice.
但是，賽勒可能比任何其他學者都要多地，將行為經濟學提升到了突出地位，讓這門科學的研究成果走入了實踐。
譯文來源考研英語時事閱讀
