Behavioral Finance

Over the past several decades, the field of finance has developed a successful paradigm based on the notions that investors and managers are generally rational and that the prices of securities are generally “efficient.” In recent years, however, theoretical and empirical research has shown this paradigm to be insufficient in describing the various features of actual financial markets. In this course we will examine how the insights of behavioral finance complement the traditional paradigm and shed light on the behavior of asset prices, corporate finance, financial crises, and other phenomena.