Behavioural Finance is that branch of economic studies that investigates financial markets behaviours in relation to society and single individuals’ behaviour patterns.

Behavioural finance studies the behaviour of markets, investors and firms using approaches adapted from psychology. It offers new ways to think about many fundamental areas of finance – such as asset bubbles, stock market fluctuations, portfolio choice, security issuance and mergers and acquisitions. Markets may experience inefficiencies or mispricings which could reflect irrationality of some investors – thus offering opportunities for rational investors to “correct” prices. However behavioural finance posits that there are limits to such arbitrage opportunities. A focus of behavioural finance is understanding, modelling and applying individuals’ “less than rational” beliefs and preferences – building upon theories of judgement and decision making.

Questions our researchers have explored include:

How does a dynamic model of Prospect theory explain the Disposition Effect?

What are the implications of wide framing on the Disposition Effect?

How do randomized strategies alter the implications of dynamic Prospect Theory?

How can we empirically test regret theory using financial trading data?

Do stock-level experienced returns affect security selection?

Is there a link between tourism and the home-bias?

Researchers are from Statistics, WBS (Finance), WBS (Behavioural Science) and Economics.