Le 9 octobre 2017, Richard H. Thaler a reçu le Prix de la Banque de Suède en sciences économiques en mémoire d'Alfred Nobel pour ses travaux en économie comportementale. Cet article présente ses principales contributions, à savoir l'établissement d'une liste d'anomalies du comportement rationnel, les fondements d'un modèle quasirationnel inspiré de la psychologie et, finalement, l'approche des politiques publiques connue sous le nom de Nudge. Pour conclure, nous revenons de manière plus subjective sur les apports de Thaler en économie et spéculons sur un avenir possible de l'économie comportementale. Thaler-rationalité limitée Richard H. Thaler on The Limits of Rationality On October 9, 2017, Richard H. Thaler was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in behavioral economics. The article presents his main contributions, namely the establishment of a list of anomalies of human behaviors from the perspective of rational models, the laying of foundations for a quasi-rational model inspired by psychology, and the approach to public policy commonly known as Nudge. As a conclusion, we more subjectively comment on the influence Thaler has had on the economic science, and speculate on a possible path forward for behavioral economics.

It has been shown that living in risky environments, as well as having a risky occupation, can moderate risk-tolerance. Despite the involvement of dopamine in the expectation of reward described by neurobiologists, a GWAS study was not able to demonstrate a genetic contribution of genes involved in the dopaminergic pathway in risk attitudes and gene candidate studies gave contrasting results. We test the possibility that a genetic effect of the DRD4-7R allele in risk-taking behavior could be modulated by environmental factors. We show that the increase in risk-tolerance due to the 7R allele is independent of the environmental risk in two populations in Northern Senegal, one of which is exposed to a very high risk due to dangerous fishing.