The editing process was the best for me. President Vahagn Khachaturyan attended the presentation of Richard Thaler’s book "Misbehaving"

On May 5, President Vahagn Khachaturyan attended the presentation of the book "Misbehaving” by Richard Thaler at the PMI Science Research Center of Philip Morris International Company. Nobel laureate Richard Taylor’s book was edited by President Vahagn Khachaturyan and translated from English by Noune Gabrielyan.

"Misbehaving” is a fascinating story about reconsidering academic disciplines and changing the way we think about economics, ourselves, and the world. The book was published by the "Antares" media holding, the director of the "Apaven" company. The patron of literature is the Chairman of the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen of Armenia, Arsen Ghazaryan.

Rector of the National Polytechnic University of Armenia Gor Vardanyan noted that as the center of engineering education and knowledge, the university welcomes such events. “In fact, the approaches in this book are informal, born as a result of the combination of science, philosophy, psychology”, said the rector. Chairman of the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen of Armenia Arsen Ghazaryan nioted that he was proud to support the publishing of another book. "What doesn’t satisfy today's society and is not completely enough, mainly comes down to science, knowledge and education. I'm glad that the book was published, I'm glad that our old friend, the current president, Vahagn Khachaturyan, edited it", said the Chairman. Armen Martirosyan, director of "Antares" media holding, also noted that a wide circle of society fill find it hard to understand any book, until it is presented in the native language. "We are trying to create an Armenian vocabulary for different fields, the most important thing is to make sure that tomorrow's students and scientists think in Armenian," said Armen Martirosyan.

Greeting the attendees, President Khachaturyan thanked for the invitation and noted that the process of editing the book was very important for him as an economist, and he began to look at some phenomena from a different perspective. President Khachaturyan edited the book before taking a high state position.

“Considering behavior in economics, evaluating it, or using it in management in general, was secondary, even tertiary for us. Much more important was the centralized planned economy system, whereby we didn’t make our decisions, they were made for us. All of this, behavioral economics and considering behavior in general was very foreign to us”, said Vahagn Khachaturyan and added, that a lot of phenomena are not the same today. “The transition from the planned economy to the free market economy required additional explanations, and we, the economists, were trying to understand what caused the individual phenomena that appeared in our lives. And so, according to the studies of recent years, they have more psychological significance and the psychological factor is much more important than presenting the phenomena taking place with general economic approaches, principles or methods.”

Addressing his speech to the economists and the businessmen, the President said: “This is more of a book for you. In the book, you will find answers to many questions that you may be looking for in the course of your business activities, answers to questions about why something happened or did not happen this or that way.”

According to Vahagn Khachaturyan, Richard Thaler didn’t express any opinion in all his conclusions, until he did thorough studies, until he analyzed the numbers in detail. "His advice to all of us, economists, is to collect numbers, data, and only after that you will be able to draw general conclusions. This is also very important especially for teaching staff, higher education institutions. In many cases, we become arrogant, thinking we already know everything, and we don't want to delve into what’s happening. We don't want to collect data, we don't want to understand what the cause is, and as a result, we suffer."

The president expressed confidence that Richard Thaler’s "Misbehaving" will attract the reader's attention. "The editing process was the best for me. This book creates new values. I feel that now I look at a number of happening phenomena differently”, the president said. “Everything is subject to change, it is not eternal, it is not complete, and in this sense, when implementing any new initiative, when making plans, we must take into account that our plans can change independently of us or our intentions, and we must be ready. There is another important circumstance: we need to look at the future with optimism, with the belief that we can change our lives, that we have opportunities and can achieve success," President Khachaturyan concluded.

During the event, leading experts in the field gave speeches about Thaler’s approaches and ideology. President Khachaturyan talked with the attendees and addressed various issues.