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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Behavioral Finance by Duke University

4.4
stars
3,863 ratings

About the Course

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....

Top reviews

SK

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.

M

May 2, 2018

This course was a very good sum up of Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. Definitely recommend to everyone who would like to know more about our flaws or would like to refresh your knowledge.

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576 - 600 of 986 Reviews for Behavioral Finance

By MADAN H M A S

Feb 24, 2023

جيد

By star r

Oct 4, 2021

wow

By Jairaj S

May 21, 2020

<3

By Shushant r

Jan 18, 2022

.

By 陈凯

Sep 27, 2017

y

By Emad N D

Dec 5, 2016

P

By Álvaro G

Nov 9, 2022

La información que brinda este curso es amplia, completa y de calidad.

Por desgracia hay varias cosas que se pueden mejorar:

1º Los subtítulos en muschas ocasiones estan mal, pero si comprendes bien el ingles puedes escuchar al profesor/a y solucionado.

2º Los exámenes de la semana 2 y 3 no tienen las soluciones para que puedas comprobar tus errores y aprender de ellos. Pero en el foro de debate ya estan subidas por algunos almunos, donde puede comprobarlo.

3º La duración del curso no se adecua a las 5 horas que se especifican, pues las 10 lecturas que hay en el curso, son en ingles y son bastantes diapositivas, por ende, se necesita de mas tiempo, ya que no solo hay que leerlo sino que hay que entenderlo.

By Kanika A

Jan 1, 2020

The readings for week 2 and 3 could have explained the biases in more detail using examples, so that the questions on the quiz don't look alien while still being challenging. Could have benefitted from Quiz Answers and explanations for weeks 2 & 3, just like the ones provided for week 1, so that we know where we went wrong. Really liked the Jean-Paul Rodrigues questions on Week 3 quiz. Liked how links were provided for supplementary material about Bubbles and Crashes - would have liked similar links for other weeks- to read on my own and enhance my learning. Great course, a very new field for me. This course has gotten me very interested in exploring this domain further.

By Khanh D

Oct 6, 2021

Personally, the reading resources are comprehensive and useful in understanding behavioral economics concepts. However, the description of some parts about US mortgage is really difficult for me to understand. Moreover, I thought that there would be answers explanations for Quiz 2 and 3 just like Quiz 1, but there wouldn't, so there are a lot of questions that I didn't understand why. That's what I feel sorry the most about this course. Otherwise, this course is perfect, I kind of understand a lot of biases and axioms (especially from Week 1). Anyway, you have done a great job in helping more people understand behavioral economics; I really appreciate that.

By Nagendra G

Jun 19, 2017

This is a good course. My first foray into behavioral finance and I am very interested and ready now to dig deeper into the subject. The only reason I am not giving a 5 star is because I felt the lectures could have been a little more detail oriented and not as precisely up to the point as they were. Given that I am a non-finance person, it took me a little longer to grasp a few things. But I like and respect the teachers and clearly they had full grip on the subject.

Highly recommend to anyone to can accept the fact the behavior and biases play a major role in our financial decision making process.

By Harpreet S

Dec 28, 2020

This course is very helpful for people who take decisions in the financial industry. There was quite a bit of over dose of nomenclature and terms, which one is supposed to remember to mark the right answer in the quiz. Instead, some way is to be devised so that the person understands the concept and is able to chose correct option and situation without exactly knowing that heavy term/phrase. Overall, this course made me look back at many of my decisions which I now feel, I could have taken differently. I would definitely recommend this course to all the people who are in the business community.

By Gunnar R

Jun 25, 2021

I really enjoyed the material of the course and the lectures. I think this course points out several useful principles. However, I think there are some things that can be improved here. 1.) The way in which the biases are defined often seemed a bit vague to me and I had to go over it a few times to clarify for myself what they were and what they were not. 2.) More practice questions would help in clarifying the application. Especially, questions with a hard right and a hard wrong would be useful to separate concepts from each other. But altogether, I liked it and I learned a lot.

By Moriah

Sep 7, 2023

Overall this was an extremely insightful course in which the material presented was relevant and relatively simple to follow. The only reason I'm not giving it a full five stars is because of the course structure. Because there is a somewhat substantial amount of information to digest from the readings each week, having practice quizzes or activities such as flashcards/matching definitions would've allowed for more practice with understanding the various biases prior to taking the tests at the end of the week.

By kumrmt-97_rm m

Feb 10, 2020

It provide me a brief understanding in the area Behavioral Finance. While, I think we could still imporove the course in some ways, 1. the structure is not so clear. It's better to index the points by numbers. 2. I think we could provide more video explanation for some points, it just skip the video explanation form some key tersm. i.e. framing. 3. I am not familiar with some historical financial crisis that exists in the tests, I think if those were replaced with some all-well-know knowledge will be better.

By Thilo W

Aug 13, 2021

I thought the course content was good. It certainly provided valuable info in easy-to-understand manner. However, the quiz questions were not covered very well in the course readings and videos - at least not so far as info that was made available. While some critical thinking is certainly warranted, the gap betwen the course content and the objectives in the quiz was wide. Therefore, I would recommend adding additional content to fill this gap. Nevertheless, many thanks for the valuable content. Cheers!

By MARIA E C

Jan 13, 2021

I studied psychology, so it was very cool to link behavioral knowledge with finances, I learned very interesting things like economic bubbles. It is already an old course and you have to complement it with other sources to better understand the content.

Estudié psicología, así que fue muy padre vincular el conocimiento conductual con las finanzas, aprendí cosas muy interesantes como las burbujas económicas.

Ya es un curso viejito y hay que complementar con otras fuentes para entender mejor el contenido.

By Daniel K H

Jun 22, 2019

I have always pondered about why people make irrational economics decisions. This course gave me a framework to examine those. The professors present in a very straight forward way, and offer a multitude of hypothetical examples.

Some of the questions on the exams did call out biases that were not explicitly called out in the lectures or readings. My only other suggestions for improvement are to lengthen this course to four weeks, and to consider offering a more advanced follow-on course.

By Natasha H

Jul 14, 2020

I really enjoyed the Behavioral Finance course from Duke University. There was a good balance between independent reading and videos explaining some of the difficult topics in more depth. There was a good range of practical implications discussed, both related to finance and more broadly.

I found the assessment very difficult and at times the questions seemed very broad and not very relevant to the course content.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the Behavioral Finance course!

By Paul J

Aug 9, 2020

This course was really useful. The course differs in some ways by having lots of material to read and fewer lectures. But some of the nature of biases cant merely be presented by video. It does cover many of the biases and now that I know about them I can hopefully sidestep them when I see them. Overall its definitely worth your time. I would have liked to see a bit more content and have the exams be a bit more thorough with more explanations and hence the 4 stars.

By Rebeca M M d L

Dec 7, 2016

This course has very interesting and complete content. However, for begginers it can be a bit hard to take all quizes successfully at first attempt, due to the high number of concepts addressed in the videos and articles. Some concepts seems obvious at first, but a begginner can get confused among them. Maybe the material should be better organized in topics, in order to facilitate the comprehension of different ideas. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this course.

By bob n

May 28, 2020

While Interesting material, wish there were more examples. A bit of a potpourri of terms, a glossary would have been helpful. Videos did a nice job of filling in pieces. Also perhaps I rushed, but didn't sense a thread throughout the material. Readings/case studies in week 3 from thebubblebubble.com were interesting, would have like some discussions from course professors on one or two rather than only being asked about them in the week three quiz.

By Holger H

Dec 29, 2022

Comprehensive course on behavioural economics with a focus on getting those constraints in thinking and alternatives for rational thought explained in clear language. Although some prior knowledge in economics comes in handy, this course is clear enough to follow and complete for those with no experience in the dismal science. The video's are clear, the reading consists of college slides and the examples give a clear reading of complex processes.

By Eeshaan A

Mar 9, 2020

For people who think that they are interested in the field of Behavioral economics, this course could be a great starting point.

Also,

the course material (parts of it) have valuable, real life applications for you and me, which could mean the difference between an average life of common American or a quality life, build on profitable, solid, and well strategized financial decisions, knowing where the inherent biases in the human behavior lie.

By Judy D

Mar 21, 2022

I do not have a background in this field and took this course as an introduction. I found the material content to be very interesting, however, probably because this is my first venture into this field, I had a hard time applying the biases and terminology to the various scenerios but did enjoy trying. I find the evening news is more interesting as I try to apply what I learned from this course when applicable. A good introduction for me.

By Lindsay P

Aug 24, 2016

This is a great starter course/primer for behavioral finance! I would like to thank Dr Rasiel for the contents of this course.

Recommendations for improvement:

-Create a single sheet defining the biases contained in the course for easy reference.

-Add more examples and retrospectives that explain the similarities and differences between the biases.

Overall, I really enjoyed the course and look forward to additional courses on Behavioral Finance.