Finance and the Behavioral Prospect: Risk, Exuberance, and Abnormal Markets

This book explains how investor behavior, from mental accounting to the combustible interplay of hope and fear, affects financial economics. The transformation of portfolio theory begins with the identification of anomalies. Gaps in perception and behavioral departures from rationality spur momentum, irrational exuberance, and speculative bubbles. Behavioral accounting undermines the rational premises of mathematical finance. Assets and portfolios are imbued with “affect.” Positive and nega...