Quantitative Perspectives on Behavioral Economics and Finance – serie

This survey of portfolio theory, from its modern origins through more sophisticated, “postmodern” incarnations, evaluates portfolio risk according to the first four moments of any statistical distribution: mean, variance, skewness, and excess kurtosis.

Students in various disciplines—from law and government to business and health policy—need to understand several quantitative aspects of finance (such as the capital asset pricing model or financial options) and policy analysis (e.g., assessing the weight of probabilistic evidence) but often have little quantitative background.

This book explains how investor behavior, from mental accounting to the combustible interplay of hope and fear, affects financial economics. The transformation of portfolio theory begins with the identification of anomalies. Gaps in perception and behavioral departures from rationality spur momentum, irrational exuberance, and speculative bubbles. Behavioral accounting undermines the rational premises of mathematical finance. Assets and portfolios are imbued with “affect.” Positive and negative emotions warp investment decisions. Whether hedging against intertemporal changes in their ability to bear risk or climbing a psychological hierarchy of needs, investors arrange their portfolios and financial affairs according to emotions and perceptions. Risk aversion and life-cycle theories of consumption provide possible solutions to the equity premium puzzle, an iconic financial mystery. Prospect theory has questioned the cogency of the efficient capital markets hypothesis. Behavioral portfolio theory arises from a psychological account of security, potential, and aspiration.

This book rehabilitates beta as a definition of systemic risk by using particle physics to evaluate discrete components of financial risk.

Antitrust economics is a field that draws extensively on the economic theory of industrial organization, and the field's frontier is at the cutting edge of economic research.

This book explains how investor behavior, from mental accounting to the combustible interplay of hope and fear, affects financial economics.

This book rehabilitates beta as a definition of systemic risk by using particle physics to evaluate discrete components of financial risk.