Irrational Behavior in Financial Decision-Making
Session 1 – September 29 – October 22
Session 2 – October 27 – November 19
Why is it that smart people make foolish spending decisions? Why are we inclined to sell winning investments too early, but hold losers too long; why do we purchase extended product warranties that we don’t need; why do we have such difficulty staying within our budgets? The field of Behavioral Finance takes lessons from psychology to explain when, and why, we make irrational investment, saving, and spending decisions.
Are you a high school student who would like to become a better investor by learning to predict, and thus avoid, the settings in which you personally are most at risk of making poor financial choices? Would you also like to learn some tools and skills that can help you to identify financial irrationality on a market-wide scale? If so, this is the course for you.
In this 4-week, certificate course, Professor Emma Rasiel, Eads Distinguished Professor of the Practice and Associate Chair of the Economics Department at Duke University, has adapted material from her popular undergraduate Behavioral Finance class for a high school audience. Topics include:
- Availability (the more we hear about something, the more we believe it)
- Framing (how easily we can be influenced to change our minds)
- The Endowment Effect (once we own something, we don’t want to give it up)
- Confirmation Bias (why we only look for news that supports our point of view)
You will spend 2 hours per week in live Zoom sessions with Professor Rasiel, and 2 hours per week on asynchronous study materials, including individual and group activities and games to reinforce the lessons learned. You will also be able to ask questions and seek guidance on discussion boards that will be closely monitored by Professor Rasiel and her experienced teaching assistants.
Live sessions: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4 – 5 p.m. EST
After completing this course, you will be able to recognize circumstances under which you (or others) often make “irrational” decisions with respect to financial saving and spending choices. You will have an understanding of both the origin and nature of heuristics (“rules of thumb”) that drive these decisions, and some tools with which to overcome the innate desire to make a less-than-optimal choice. You will also learn to recognize the environments in which large groups, or even entire markets, are inclined towards mass irrational decision-making.
The cost of this online course is $2,000
Course Details
Eligibility: Grades 9-12 (2020-2021 academic year); no prior knowledge of economics or finance required
Delivery: Online; 40 spots available in each session
Dates: Two session options available:
September 29 – October 22 or October 27 – November 19
Live Sessions: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EST
Asynchronous Study: approximately two hours per week, self-paced
Fee: $2,000
About the Professor
Emma Rasiel is Associate Chair of the Economics Department at Duke and Eads Professor of the Practice at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. She teaches several undergraduate finance classes, including Investments, Intermediate Finance, Behavioral Finance and Equity Research. She has also taught a number of finance courses for Executive MBAs at Fuqua.
Emma is also Teaching Director of the Duke Financial Economics Center (DFE), where she runs corporate-sponsored training programs to help prepare students for jobs in the financial markets. She is Director of Graduate Studies for Duke’s MS in Quantitative Finance, and is collaborating with Duke’s Engineering School Pratt in launching the new Master of Engineering in FinTech.
Emma completed her PhD in finance at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, in 2003. Prior to beginning the PhD program, she was an Executive Director in the London office of Goldman Sachs, where she traded European government bond options. Emma has an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS and MA in Mathematics from Oxford University.