Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

by Richard H. Thaler

In order to get managers to be willing to take risks, it is necessary to create an environment in which those managers will be rewarded for decisions that were value-maximizing ex ante, that is, with information available at the time they were made, even if they turn out to lose money ex post.

Imagine instead having to explain that you quit early today because you didn’t make very much money. That will be a long conversation, unless your spouse is an economist.