A Survey of Behavioral Finance

Nicholas Barberis and Richard Thaler

No 9222, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Behavioral finance argues that some financial phenomena can plausibly be understood using models in which some agents are not fully rational. The field has two building blocks: limits to arbitrage, which argues that it can be difficult for rational traders to undo the dislocations caused by less rational traders; and psychology, which catalogues the kinds of deviations from full rationality we might expect to see. We discuss these two topics, and then present a number of behavioral finance applications: to the aggregate stock market, to the cross-section of average returns, to individual trading behavior, and to corporate finance. We close by assessing progress in the field and speculating about its future course.

JEL-codes: G11 G12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-fin
Note: AP CF
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (137)

Published as Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003. "A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128 Elsevier.

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