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Duke University

Behavioral Finance

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.

Status: Financial Planning
Status: Consumer Behaviour
BeginnerCourse5 hours

Featured reviews

JS

5.0Reviewed Jul 18, 2020

Engaging and challenging course. Taking the course gave me a lot of realizations as to my biases on investing and personal finance that I should strive hard to consciously avoid.

LC

4.0Reviewed Oct 28, 2022

T​his was a great course and I love digging deeper into the behaviors that drive finance. I did feel though, that there was somewhat of a disconnect from the material to the quizes.

SK

5.0Reviewed Feb 25, 2020

Good course! There is just one thing I would improve here - an explanation of the mistakes after the tests are done. This improvement should increase the student`s understanding of specific topics.

PS

4.0Reviewed Jan 10, 2020

The course was pretty good, required a lotta pre requisites and most of all the professors were amazing but didn't teach much less scenarios and no answers to the questions asked in assignments

OS

5.0Reviewed Aug 10, 2020

The instructor was not only knowledgeable, but she also took the time to give real-world applications. Wonderful course full of information to help us better understand our clients.

TB

4.0Reviewed May 11, 2020

The Courses tell us about about a number of biasis using good example. It would have been much more interesting if biases were explained using more example of bubbles and crisis.

MD

5.0Reviewed Aug 20, 2017

Insightfull short course on psychological background on investing. Recommend this course for any investment professional or amateur to learn about the most common pitfalls in investing

RM

4.0Reviewed Apr 21, 2020

Very interesting and fun to learn. The slides could have more details or provide reading to better understand the concepts separate to the examples. Thoroughly enjoyed though, would recommend!

DS

4.0Reviewed Aug 15, 2023

The course did challenge the way I looked at and perceived certain financial issues or dilemnas. Based on the number of hours to complete the course I personally found that it took me longer.

KB

5.0Reviewed Jun 4, 2025

Extremely informative, especially as I have almost no prior knowledge about finance. If you want to enrich your knowledge pertaining financial decisions and managements, this is the best course.

NH

5.0Reviewed Jan 7, 2021

I found this course to be so insightful and I loved learning about the various biases and behaviors common to many of them. I loved the quiz challenges. A great investment of my time.

BP

4.0Reviewed Jul 17, 2024

Interesting, but a little more support and practice could have been useful for a smoother transition to the quizzes. Otherwise it was a good course and I learnt some useful stuff from it.

All reviews

Showing: 20 of 1,142

Dane Cannon
1.0
Reviewed Aug 28, 2016
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