The recent boom in behavioral economics, marked by the Nobel Memorial Prize for Richard Thaler in 2017, is often described as a refutation of the supposedly one-dimensional models of human behavior native to neoliberal thought. Yet this dichotomy relies on a false contrast and glosses over the many links between the two fields. Rüdiger Graf concentrates on the overlooked case of Günther Schmölders. As a member of the Nazi party and SS from 1933 onward, and MPS president from 1968 to 1970, Schmölders was the proponent of an idiosyncratic strain of behavioral economics in Germany. Graf shows the multiple political uses to which behavioral economic approaches can be put—to both limit state power and extend it into new domains.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 39