Behavioral Issues – Overconfidence Simon Gervais Duke University (
[email protected]) June 29, 2019 FTG Summer School – Wharton School Intro OC in Markets Emergence of OC OC in Firms Contracting with OC Conclusion Behavioral Issues – Overconfidence | FTG Summer School – June 29, 2019 2 / 98 Intro OC in Markets Emergence of OC OC in Firms Contracting with OC Conclusion Lecture Overview Psychology in Finance. Behavioral/cognitive biases: Overconfidence, aribution bias, optimism and wishful thinking, ambiguity aversion, recency bias, loss aversion, regret aversion, etc. Lead to biased financial decision-making: Trading, financial investments, diversification, real investment, corporate policies, etc. Psychology and Overconfidence. DeBondt and Thaler (1995): “[P]erhaps the most robust finding in the psychology of judgment is that people are overconfident.” Fischhoff, Slovic and Lichtenstein (1977), Alpert and Raiffa (1982): People tend to overestimate the precision of their knowledge and information. Svenson (1981), Taylor and Brown (1988): Most individuals overestimate their abilities, see themselves as beer than average, and see themselves beer than others see them. Behavioral Issues – Overconfidence | FTG Summer School – June 29, 2019 3 / 98 Intro OC in Markets Emergence of OC OC in Firms Contracting with OC Conclusion Lecture Overview (cont’d) Who’s Impacted? Griffin and Tversky (1992): Experts tend to be more overconfident than relatively inexperienced individuals. Einhorn (1980): Overconfidence is more severe for tasks with delayed and vaguer feedback. Many fields: investment bankers (Staël von Holstein, 1972), engineers (Kidd, 1970), entrepreneurs (Cooper, Woo, and Dunkelberg, 1988), lawyers (Wagenaar and Keren, 1986), managers (Russo and Schoemaker, 1992). Lecture Objectives. Development of a theoretical framework to model overconfidence.