Peter Wakker honored with KHMW Van der Aa Lifetime Achievement Award
The KHMW Van der Aa Oeuvre Prize 2026 has been awarded to research fellow Peter Wakker, Professor of Decision-Making under Uncertainty in the Behavioural Economics programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam. The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW: Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen) is the oldest ‘Learned Society’ in the Netherlands. The prize is awarded to one Dutch researcher each year, ranging over all sciences. The prize money for 2026 is 25,000 euros.
Professor Peter Wakker is internationally among the most influential researchers in the field of decision-making under risk and uncertainty. For more than forty years, he has made fundamental contributions to the development of behavioral economics. His research on prospect theory, probability weighting, ambiguity attitudes, and utility measurement has helped shape modern economic thinking about choice and rationality, and is widely applied in economics, psychology, healthcare, and actuarial science.
A key landmark in his oeuvre is his joint paper with Amos Tversky in Econometrica (1995), which is still regarded as a theoretical foundation for research on risk preferences. His collaboration with Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman on so-called experienced utility has also had a major impact on research into well-being and decision-making. In addition, his book Prospect Theory for Risk and Ambiguity (2010) is a standard reference work for researchers around the world.
Wakker’s work is distinguished by its combination of theoretical depth and societal relevance. His insights contribute to better decision-making in areas such as healthcare, pension policy, and insurance, and have influenced generations of researchers both in the Netherlands and abroad.
“The average Dutch person is too afraid of risk,” Wakker states in an interview for the KHMW website. “Because of this, pension funds are constrained in what they do. In the end, this unreasonable fear of risk and short-term losses costs every Dutch citizen a great deal of money.”
According to Wakker, better understanding of uncertainty is of great importance for societal decision-making. “If we had a better understanding in the Netherlands of how to deal sensibly with risk, it would benefit society enormously.”
Wakker has played an important role in the development of behavioral economics, both in the Netherlands and internationally. He not only worked on theoretical models, but also gained practical experience at Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) and in medical decision-making, working in hospitals for many years. In doing so, he contributed to the application of decision-theoretic insights in a wide range of societal contexts.
Although the KHMW Van der Aa Oeuvre Prize is a crowning recognition of a long and influential career, Wakker has no plans to stop. “I still have many ideas that I want to develop and share, more than can be realised in a single lifetime.”
Read an interview in Dutch with Peter Wakker: “Ik had vanaf het begin mijn eigen vragen en intuïties”.
Besides being a distinguished researcher, Peter is also a valued teacher in Tinbergen Institute's research master program in Economics.
The award ceremony will take place on Monday, June 29, at 11:00 AM in the Hodshonhuis, Spaarne 17, Haarlem. Learn more on the website of the Erasmus School of Economics.