Eldar Shafir

Eldar Shafir is the Class of 1987 Professor of Behavioral Science and Public Policy, the Inaugural Director of Princeton’s Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Public Policy.

Shafir co-founded ideas42, a social science R&D lab, where he is currently the scientific director. He studies decision-making, cognitive science, and behavioral economics. His recent research has focused on decision-making in contexts of poverty and on the application of behavioral research to policy.

Shafir is Past President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on the Future of Behavioral Sciences. He was a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability.

Shafir has received several awards, most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the William James Book Award. He was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013, and elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He edited a book called “The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy,” (2012), and co-authored, with economist Sendhil Mullainathan, “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” (2013).

Shafir received his B.A. from Brown University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.