IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/anr/refeco/v7y2015p133-159.html

Behavioral Finance

Author

Listed:
  • David Hirshleife

    (Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, California 92697)

Abstract

Behavioral finance studies the application of psychology to finance, with a focus on individual-level cognitive biases. I describe here the sources of judgment and decision biases, how they affect trading and market prices, the role of arbitrage and flows of wealth between more rational and less rational investors, how firms exploit inefficient prices and incite misvaluation, and the effects of managerial judgment biases. There is a need for more theory and testing of the effects of feelings on financial decisions and aggregate outcomes. Especially, the time has come to move beyond behavioral finance to social finance, which studies the structure of social interactions, how financial ideas spread and evolve, and how social processes affect financial outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • David Hirshleife, 2015. "Behavioral Finance," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 133-159, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:anr:refeco:v:7:y:2015:p:133-159
    DOI: 10.1146/annurev-financial-092214-043752
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-financial-092214-043752
    Download Restriction: Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1146/annurev-financial-092214-043752?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Taffler, Richard J. & Spence, Crawford & Eshraghi, Arman, 2017. "Emotional economic man: Calculation and anxiety in fund management," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 53-67.
    2. Jukka Ilomäki, 2016. "Risk-Free Rates And Animal Spirits In Financial Markets," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(03), pages 1-18, September.
    3. Lee, I. & Lléo-Bono, A. & Rauh, C. & Tipoe, E., 2025. "The Causal Effects of Confidence Awareness on Financial Literacy and Behaviour," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2567, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Dorow, Anderson & Da Costa Jr, Newton & Takase, Emilio & Prates, Wlademir & Da Silva, Sergio, 2017. "On the neural substrates of the disposition effect and return performance," MPRA Paper 83354, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Michael S. Drake & Jacob R. Thornock & Brady J. Twedt, 2017. "The internet as an information intermediary," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 543-576, June.
    6. Winkler, Julian, 2024. "Changing preferences as a source of stock return variation," MPRA Paper 122802, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Adam Butt & M. Scott Donald & F. Douglas Foster & Susan Thorp & Geoffrey J. Warren & Tom Smith, 2017. "Design of MySuper default funds: influences and outcomes," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(1), pages 47-85, March.
    8. Winkler, Julian, 2023. "Managing fundamentals versus preferences: Re-balancing portfolios and stock returns," MPRA Paper 119149, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. He, Wen & Hu, Maggie (Rong), 2016. "Religion and bank loan terms," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 205-215.
    10. Viviana Ventre & Roberta Martino & Fabrizio Maturo, 2023. "Subjective perception of time and decision inconsistency in interval effect," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(5), pages 4855-4880, October.
    11. Stefanescu, Razvan & Dumitriu, Ramona, 2016. "Particularitǎţi ale evoluţiei variabilelor financiare [Some particularities of the financial variables evolution]," MPRA Paper 73481, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 02 Sep 2016.
    12. Dudley, Evan & Zhang, Ning, 2016. "Trust and corporate cash holdings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 363-387.
    13. Alexia Gaudeul & Caterina Giannetti, 2021. "Fostering the adoption of robo-advisors: A 3-weeks online stock-trading experiment," Discussion Papers 2021/275, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    14. repec:cam:camjip:2527 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Baghestanian, Sascha & Gortner, Paul J. & van der Weele, Joël J., 2015. "Peer effects and risk sharing in experimental asset markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 67, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2015.
    16. Massa, Massimo & li, jennifer & Zhang, Hong, 2016. "Culture vs. Bias: Can Social Trust Mitigate the Disposition Effect?," CEPR Discussion Papers 11474, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Fang, Guobin & Zhou, Xuehua & Ma, Huimin & Zhao, XiaoFang & Deng, YaoXun & Xie, Luoyan, 2025. "Economic policy uncertainty, investor sentiment and systemic financial risk: Evidence from China," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    18. Cummins, Mark & Dowling, Michael & Lucey, Brian M., 2015. "Behavioral influences in non-ferrous metals prices," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 9-22.
    19. Annalisa Fabretti & Tommy Gärling & Stefano Herzel & Martin Holmen, 2017. "Convex incentives in financial markets: an agent-based analysis," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 40(1), pages 375-395, November.
    20. Shiller, Robert J., 1999. "Human behavior and the efficiency of the financial system," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 1305-1340, Elsevier.
    21. Ahern, Kenneth R., 2017. "Information networks: Evidence from illegal insider trading tips," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 26-47.
    22. Chen, Jia & Hou, Kewei & Stulz, Rene M., 2015. "Are Firms in 'Boring' Industries Worth Less?," Working Paper Series 2015-02, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:anr:refeco:v:7:y:2015:p:133-159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: http://www.annualreviews.org (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.annualreviews.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.