Eldar Shafir

Eldar Shafir (Hebrew: אלדר שפיר) is an American behavioral scientist, and the co-author of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (with Sendhil Mullainathan). He is the Class of 1987 Professor in Behavioral Science and Public Policy; Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University Department of Psychology and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Inaugural Director of Princeton’s Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Public Policy. Shafir is a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He is co-founder, Board Member, and scientific director at Ideas42, a non-profit organization that uses behavioral science to help solve tough social problems. His main area of study is behavioral economics, that is, how the decisions people make affect their financial outcomes. His research has led him to the general conclusion that people often make inadvisable decisions on financial matters when they think they are being rational.