Behavioral Economics & Finance ((4 Credits))

Catalog description

Behavioral Economics & Finance looks at the emotional and cognitive factors that affect how managers and professionals process information and make decisions in an economic environment. This course will explore how managers and professionals analyze factors like personal perspective, motivation, self-control, and internal versus external habits, in predicting and modeling behavior that influences economic choices.   Topics will include the psychology of economics, financial decision making, rationality, overconfidence, motivation, and the impact of societal values and altruism as influencing factors in economics. It is expected that students will come away with a greater understanding of the impact of psychological and behavioral evidence has in economic and financial decision making. Behavioral Economics provides a more general introduction to the influence of psychology on economic theory, and covers a wider range of market phenomena and theoretical approaches. Behavioral Finance is much more focused on financial decisions, and on challenging the established theoretical precepts of financial economics. This course combines the study of psychology and its impact on economics and also provides an introduction to the more specific applications of psychology to finance. This course is offered for our International Education program students. Prerequisites: Macroeconomics ( ECON 2015 ).