Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Behavioral verus efficient markets


This chart tracks word counts using the Lexis Nexis news data base of the terms “behavioral finance” and “efficient markets” by year in General News, Major Papers, Full Text, scaled by an estimate of the number of words of text on Lexis-Nexis for the year. Shiller calls it “dramatic evidence that behavioral finance has been gaining in the marketplace for ideas.” - from the portfolioist.com

The strength of behavioral finance thinking has swamped the former dominant efficient markets paradigm, but we are still not at the point where we can have a complete behavioral framework. Psychology is messy and does not lend itself to well-defined theories. Tests are contradictory and ambiguous so it is unlikely that we will get single unified theory using a behavioralist approach.

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