This book presents selected papers on the factors that serve to influence an individual’s capacity in financial decision-making. Initial chapters provide an overview of the cognitive factors affecting financial decisions and suggest a link between limited cognitive capacity and the need for financial education. The book then expands on these cognitive limitations to explore the tendency for overconfidence in decision-making and the interplay between rational and irrational factors. Later contributions show how credit card companies benefit from limitations in consumer financial literacy, how gender and cognition intersect to play an important role in financial decision-making, and how to improve financial capacity through financial literacy and education campaigns, including those addressing developed marketplaces. This comprehensive collection of papers will be of value to all readers who seek to better understand the multi-factorial and complex nature of personal financial management in today’s economic climate.

The area of behavioral finance, though relatively young, has matured and spread beyond its initial objectives: to demonstrate the fallibility of the efficient market hypothesis, to shake the belief in the ubiquity of rational decision making, and to convince the finance world of the importance of psychological biases in decision making. The success of the field in meeting its goals, however, has called into question its continued relevance. Behavioral finance is thus currently at a crossroads, and researchers need to decide which way they should turn for the area to continue to thrive and to meaningfully contribute to financial knowledge.This collection of papers deals with rarely-explored topics to point at new directions that behavioral finance should explore to maintain its viability, along with contributions to traditional topics. Some of these topics include innovations, the psychology of policy-makers, biases of peer-to-peer market participants, the behavior and motivation behind corporate social responsibility, and the design of exchanges. Additionally, well-known topics such as the disposition effect, slow and fast decisions and the availability heuristic are revisited, and surprising new findings are presented.By opening the field to novel avenues of discussion, this book addresses the future of behavioral finance and its transition into a new era.

This content provides financial analysts, investment professionals, and financial planners with a review of how financial risk-tolerance tests can and should be evaluated. It begins by clarifying terms related to risk taking and is followed by a broad overview of two important measurement terms: validity and reliability. It concludes with examples for practice.

This indispensable resource explains principles of financial planning and financial psychology to help teens and young adults make good financial decisions now and achieve their financial goals. Financial literacy for savvy teens and young adults means meeting them where they are, which is in high school and college. It also means understanding how they differ from their Gen X and elder millennial parents. For example, they tend to be debt-averse, thrifty, and responsible but may err on the side of taking too little risk, such as not investing early enough. This book uses economics and psychology to help Generation Z students make better decisions throughout their lives and especially in their formative years. Financial Literacy for Generation Z addresses decisions students have to make while still in school, after graduation, and later, with the greatest emphasis on the decisions closest at hand to them. It encompasses not just money talk—for example, how much to contribute to your 401(k)—but also decisions that are directly connected to money, such as choosing a major and a career, building a credit record, and managing your first real income.

WINNER, Business: Personal Finance/Investing, 2015 USA Best Book Awards FINALIST, Business: Reference, 2015 USA Best Book Awards Investor Behavior provides readers with a comprehensive understanding and the latest research in the area of behavioral finance and investor decision making. Blending contributions from noted academics and experienced practitioners, this 30-chapter book will provide investment professionals with insights on how to understand and manage client behavior; a framework for interpreting financial market activity; and an in-depth understanding of this important new field of investment research. The book should also be of interest to academics, investors, and students. The book will cover the major principles of investor psychology, including heuristics, bounded rationality, regret theory, mental accounting, framing, prospect theory, and loss aversion. Specific sections of the book will delve into the role of personality traits, financial therapy, retirement planning, financial coaching, and emotions in investment decisions. Other topics covered include risk perception and tolerance, asset allocation decisions under inertia and inattention bias; evidenced based financial planning, motivation and satisfaction, behavioral investment management, and neurofinance. Contributions will delve into the behavioral underpinnings of various trading and investment topics including trader psychology, stock momentum, earnings surprises, and anomalies. The final chapters of the book examine new research on socially responsible investing, mutual funds, and real estate investing from a behavioral perspective. Empirical evidence and current literature about each type of investment issue are featured. Cited research studies are presented in a straightforward manner focusing on the comprehension of study findings, rather than on the details of mathematical frameworks.

Consumer financial literacy education often appears as a helpful, commonsense solution to neoliberalism and the individualization of responsibility for economic risk. However, in Financial Literacy Education: Neoliberalism, the Consumer and the Citizenthis particular literacy is argued to be both ineffective and unjust. Socially created poverty, unemployment and economic insecurity require more than individual consumer solutions; they require collective responses by engaged, critical citizens. Utilizing concepts from Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu and Baudrillard this book challenges those who claim that 'there is no alternative' to neoliberal insecurity and reduce education to a consumerist training of entrepreneurial consumer-citizens who can continually invest in themselves and the market. Through an analysis of consumer financial literacy education's present and historical supports, as well as its likely effects, this book argues that the choice before us is not financial illiteracy or financial literacy. Rather, the choice is between subjugation to the requirements of perpetual competition or overcoming alienation, insecurity and exploitation, aims the critical financial literacy education outlined at the end of this book supports. This book will appeal to those interested in understanding the conditions of our freedom in an increasingly financialized world--critical educators, philosophers and sociologists of education and financial literacy researchers.