About this course: We make thousands of decisions every day. Do I cross the road now, or wait for the oncoming truck to pass? Should I eat fries or a salad for lunch? How much should I tip the cab driver? We usually make these decisions with almost no thought, using what psychologists call “heuristics” – rules of thumb that enable us to navigate our lives. Without these mental shortcuts, we would be paralyzed by the multitude of daily choices. But in certain circumstances, these shortcuts lead to predictable errors – predictable, that is, if we know what to watch out for. Did you know, for example, that we are naturally biased towards selling investments that are doing well for us, but holding on to those that are doing poorly? Or that we often select sub-optimal insurance payment plans, and routinely purchase insurance that we don’t even need? And why do so many of us fail to enroll in our employer’s corporate retirement plans, even when the employer offers to match our contributions? Behavioral finance is the study of these and dozens of other financial decision-making errors that can be avoided, if we are familiar with the biases that cause them. In this course, we examine these predictable errors, and discover where we are most susceptible to them. This course is intended to guide participants towards better financial choices. Learn how to improve your spending, saving, and investing decisions for the future.
Who is this class for: This course is intended for anyone who has taken at least one course in economics either in high school or in college, and is interested in how our innate biases affect our financial decision-making.
Taught by: Emma Rasiel, Associate Chair and Professor
Economics
| Language | English, Subtitles: Portuguese (Brazilian) |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
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Extremely interesting and relevant content, presented in a thoughtful and compelling way. Most importantly, I learned something new that I will try to use in my own life.
This is a good course. My first foray into behavioral finance and I am very interested and ready now to dig deeper into the subject. The only reason I am not giving a 5 star is because I felt the lectures could have been a little more detail oriented and not as precisely up to the point as they were. Given that I am a non-finance person, it took me a little longer to grasp a few things. But I like and respect the teachers and clearly they had full grip on the subject.
Highly recommend to anyone to can accept the fact the behavior and biases play a major role in our financial decision making process.
Curso muito bom! Conceitos muito importantes!
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YK
Very interesting course, I learned new terminology and it will be able to analyse certain behavior that I am noticing daily at work. The only minus that why is not 5 * is the presentations. They need a bit of work to be more attractive. PDF format is ok but not really helpfull to scroll down and read. Thank you!