Visnyk of the National Bank of Ukraine, 2017, No. 239, pp. 28-54 BEHAVIORAL FINANCE: HISTORY AND FOUNDATIONS Pavlo Illiashenko1 Tallinn University of Technology, School of Business and Governance E-mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT Recent evidence suggests that ideology has the potential to affect academic research in economics and that exposure to a wide range of approaches may increase intellectual diversity, eventually leading to better decisions. Therefore, writing a literature review in behavioral finance, in principle, can bring benefits to a wide range of readers, especially since the field of behavioral finance itself has already grown into a complex web of related but distinct sub-fields and reached a stage when it can guide policy decisions. This review differs from the existent ones as it focuses on the history of the field and its psychological foundations. While the review of psychological foundations is necessary to appreciate the benefits of a behavioral approach and understand its limitations, even a brief historical detour may provide a compelling case against a naïve dichotomy between behavioral and classical finance. JEL Сodes: G02, B26, D03, D14 Keywords: behavioral finance, classical finance I. INTRODUCTION Federal Reserve research had been unable to find economies of scale in banking beyond a modest size […] citing such evidence, I noted that "megabanks being formed by growth and consolidation are increasingly complex entities that create the potential for unusually large systemic risks in the national and international economy should they fail" […]. Regrettably, we did little to address the problem. Alan Greenspan (2010). The Crisis, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. I often wondered as the banks increase in size throughout the globe prior to the crash and since: Had bankers discovered economies of scale that FED research had missed? Alan Greenspan (2014).