Eldar Shafir  Eldar Shafir (Hebrew: אלדר שפיר) is an American behavioral scientist, and the co-author of "" (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 Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He is co-founder and Board Member of 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. Shafir graduated from Brown University and received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science in 1988 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Currently, he is a Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in Princeton University Department of Psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He is Past President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. He is a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, a Research Affiliate of Innovations for Poverty Action and the Behavioral Economics Roundtable of the Russell Sage Foundation, among several other research organizations. He has recently been appointed by President Obama to the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability. The Council's task is to consider ways to strengthen financial capability across the country. Along with Peter Diamond and Amos Tversky, Shafir is a proponent of the Money illusion, compiling empirical evidence for the existence of this effect, both in experiments and in real world situations. Eldar Shafir's general area of research interest is decision making, especially behavioral economics: the study of how people make everyday decisions. Empirically based, his research draws from the fields of psychology and economics to support the view that decision making is often not based on what is assumed by rational agent models. Shafir examines the effects of social, cognitive and emotional factors on economic decisions, such as the behavior of people who are in conflict and feel uncertainty when faced with making a decision. For instance, in a study with Amos Tversky involving Princeton students, it was found that people tend to find ways not to decide when faced with complicated and consequential decision.