Behavioralizing Finance
By Hersh Shefrin
Contents
1 Introduction 2
1.1 Brief History 4
1.2 Organization of Monograph: Foundations and Trends 6
1.3 Home Bias and Omissions 9
2 Survey of Surveys 10
2.1 Hirshleifer (2001): Review of Psychology
Literature and Link to Asset Pricing 13
2.2 Barberis and Thaler (2003): Review of Behavioral Asset
Pricing Literature 19
2.3 Baker et al. (2007): Survey of Corporate Finance 27
2.4 Subrahmanyam (2007): Additional Perspectives 37
2.5 Critique: Weaknesses in the Behavioral Approach 42
3 Behavioralizing Beliefs and Preferences 47
3.1 Behavioral Beliefs: Heuristics and Biases 48
3.2 Behavioral Preferences 51
3.3 Regret 59
3.4 Self-Control 59
4 Behavioralizing Portfolio Selection Theory 61
4.1 Preference for Positively Skewed Returns:
Full Maximization 62
4.2 Quasi-Maximization 70
5 Behavioralizing Asset Pricing Theory 82
5.1 Stochastic Discount Factor 83
5.2 How Markets Aggregate Investor Attributes 88
5.3 Aggregation and the Shape of Sentiment 91
5.4 Risk and Return 92
5.5 Long-run Fitness 100
5.6 Pricing Dynamics 102
6 Behavioralizing Corporate Finance 112
6.1 Open Questions Raised by Baker et al. 113
6.2 Managerial Psychology and Decisions 116
6.3 Social Networks 119
6.4 Entrepreneurs 122
7 Behavioralizing the Approach to Financial Market
Regulation 130
7.1 Dynamic Tug-of-War 131
7.2 Biased Cost–Benefit Assessment 140
7.3 Regulation and Financial Crises 142
7.4 Differences in Perspective 156
8 Concluding Remarks 158
References 161