Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance (Clarendon Lectures in Economics)

Product Details

The efficient markets hypothesis has been the central proposition in finance for nearly thirty years. It states that securities prices in financial markets must equal fundamental values, either because all investors are rational or because arbitrage eliminates pricing anomalies. This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance. This approach starts with an observation that the assumptions of investor rationality and perfect arbitrage are overwhelmingly contradicted by both psychological and institutional evidence. In actual financial markets, less than fully rational investors trade against arbitrageurs whose resources are limited by risk aversion, short horizons, and agency problems. The book presents models of such markets. These models explain the available financial data more accurately than the efficient markets hypothesis, and generate new predictions about security prices. By summarizing and expanding the research in behavioral finance, the book builds a new theoretical and empirical foundation for the economic analysis of real-world markets.

Customer Reviews ::

Best introductory book on behavioral finance - Robert Stephenson-padron - Pamplona, Spain
As has been admitted by even the staunchest former proponents of financial economics (such as Burton Malkiel), the multi-decades old dominant intellectual field in academic finance has piled up against itself persistent anomalous data. Thus, it is no surprise, as the science of economics advanced, that a new intellectual field would develop to challenge and replace the old. Behavioral finance, which relaxes some of the key assumptions in financial economics, utilizes survey data, and integrates knowledge from psychology to better understand financial markets, is that new intellectual field.

Although still controversial, young economists and financial professionals should become versed in this new field as early as possible: 1) because there is huge room for new research where creative economists can flex their muscle and 2) financial professionals that drop the old adherence to financial economics will have an edge over those that don't. Andrei Shleifer's work is the best introductory work on behavioral finance that I've come across, and I thus strongly recommend it to those who want a quick and easy to understand introduction to this field which is the wave of the future of academic finance (well, I hope).

Robert Stephenson-Padron
MSc student (economics & finance)
University of Navarra, Spain

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