Introduction
Finance for Normal People is the first and only book presenting a unified framework of behavioral finance. It begins with descriptions of normal human behavior, including wants, cognitive and emotional shortcuts and errors, and methods of correcting errors. It continues with behavioral portfolios, behavioral life cycle of saving and spending, behavioral asset pricing, and behavioral market efficiently.
The book is comprehensive, rigorous, and easy to understand. One student wrote: “My favorite aspect of the text is the many real life that deliver concepts even to readers without strong background in finance.”
The book is accompanied by student and instructor manuals, including excel sheets, facilitating its use in the classroom. You can use the book and manuals as a main text in behavioral finance courses for undergraduate and graduate students, and also in courses for financial professionals. You can also use portions of the book and manuals as supplements in general finance courses, such as investments and corporate finance courses.
The early chapters about differences between “normal” people and “rational” ones, and about normal cognitive and emotional shortcuts and errors are especially useful as supplements in general introductions to economics and finance. The later chapters about portfolios, asset pricing, and market efficiency, are especially useful as supplements in investments courses.
I would be pleased to help you with your teaching needs if your write to me at [email protected] (I also have drafts of slides I can send you)
Finance for Normal People: How Investors and Markets Behave
Oxford University Press 2017
Table of Contents
Introduction: What is Behavioral Finance?
Part 1: Behavioral People are Normal People
Chapter 1: Normal people
Chapter 2: Our wants for utilitarian, expressive, and emotional benefits
Chapter 3: Cognitive shortcuts and errors
Chapter 4: Emotional shortcuts and errors
Chapter 5: Correcting cognitive and emotional errors
Chapter 6: Experienced happiness, life-evaluation, and choices: Expected Utility Theory and Prospect Theory
Chapter 7: Behavioral Finance Puzzles: The dividend puzzle, the disposition puzzle, and the puzzles of dollar-cost-averaging and time-diversification
Part 2: Behavioral Finance in Portfolios, Life-Cycles, Asset Prices, and Market Efficiency
Chapter8: Behavioral portfolios
Chapter 9: Behavioral life-cycle of saving and spending
Chapter 10: Behavioral asset pricing
Chapter 11: Behavioral efficient markets
Chapter 12: Lessons of behavioral finance