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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Behavioral Finance by Duke University

4.4
stars
4,174 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

AM

Aug 15, 2017

Great course! It allows to understand the twisted logic that run in our heads. Helps to establish the balance between probabilistic truth and illusions that infect our decision-making. Thanks a lot!

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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651 - 675 of 1,048 Reviews for Behavioral Finance

By Oliver N

Jun 12, 2017

Contains a lot of excellent information. A very interesting course, and very useful for understanding our own biases and how people make sub-optimal choices. Unlike most courses on Coursera, you need to read the written pdf files as well as watch the videos - the videos alone don't cover all the information you need to pass the final.

By Akshat A

May 3, 2020

I found this course really interesting and very beautifully instructed. Week 2's course content is the most crucial aspect of this course. 10/10 recommendation to finance and economics backgrounds students. Won't take much time to understand the concepts because they have been very practically explained using day-to-day examples.

By Deepanshu M

Jul 4, 2022

The content was pretty amazing. Would have been better if the content was a little bit more video based and less of reading based ( 8-9 pdfs of 25 pages each on average). But as I can save them for future uses is one plus point of more reading material. Overall a goog to go course for anyone interested in Psychology + Finance.

By Judy S

Oct 22, 2017

I had a tougher time with this course than I thought I would. The supplemental materials were inadequate and I had a difficult time grasping the biases. Thankfully, the Internet was helpful. In all, I got a greater appreciation of behavioral economics. It is beyond money. It is in everything including the life choices we make.

By A S

Apr 9, 2023

The course is a good primer to learning behavioral finance. It covers all the biases and is snapshot of a difficult subject.Need to refer back to slides again and again.

The only issue I faced is that the course should have included

- Reference publications

- Detailed explanations

The questions in Quiz 3 are tough. Be aware :P

By Salim s

May 16, 2020

A Great course indeed. This course will add more value to your existing knowledge and will make sure you learn something more. Prof Emma is really very knowledgeable ,The quiz in the course is challenging. I would highly recommend this course for those who want to enhance their knowledge pertaining to behavioral finance.

By Xiao M

Aug 13, 2017

I hope the lecture is more connected to the reading, but with more different examples to fully explain those concepts. Also, it would be great if professors can help us differentiate those similar concepts in the lecture. Lastly, please add feedback of correct answers and explanation after quize questions! Thank you!

By Yiannis K

Jun 22, 2017

Very interesting course, I learned new terminology and it will be able to analyse certain behavior that I am noticing daily at work. The only minus that why is not 5 * is the presentations. They need a bit of work to be more attractive. PDF format is ok but not really helpfull to scroll down and read. Thank you!

By seongjae k

Oct 20, 2022

This course was very thought-provoking. I highly recommend it to not only people interested in social science but also anyone who wants to make better decisions in daily life.

I hope there were more lectures about reading overall and improvements in sound. Then this course will definitely be 5 stars for sure.

By ZHAO Y

Sep 6, 2018

Needs a lot of extra reading for students with little finance/econ background, but still quite fruitful study experience, especially if you take the quiz also as part of the learning and as a way to supplement with and consolidate the class materials. Appreciate the professors' vivid lecture talks. Thanks!

By yogesh k

Jun 16, 2020

The course was helpful in understanding the different behavioural biases in the field of finance. The slides are presented with good examples. However, the examples need to be more clearer and a simple explanation should also be included for the students who have never read about the investment area.

By Dhrumil D

Feb 21, 2022

The course is absolutely amazing. I like reading, so I was satisfied with the reading material provided to understand the concepts. For people who don't like reading: Not all the material is explained in the videos. Students must go through the reading materials to understand some of the concepts.

By Sowmya

Feb 23, 2020

I would like to thank Duke University for introducing this new course. I would like to express my gratitute and thanks to the tutors for helping me to understand the concepts. Thank you Coursera. I would like to read further on this topic. Please suggest me reading relating to Behavioral Finance.

By Scot M

Apr 9, 2020

Good course. I wish there was more commentary on personal finance and investing in real world situations. It gets most into that in the last section. I would like to have an entire section on the bubble curve and the various human biases experienced throughout market roller coasters like that.

By Harry D

Mar 20, 2021

Overall, very good and much appreciated. I agree with others that have said that they would have preferred more material in the videos rather than simply the printed material. As well, all the material on the bubbles was not available or accessible due to a computer problem of some kind.

By BUSRA G

Feb 3, 2022

Videos were not detailed. A lot of questions were not resolved in the videos and we were expected to know a lot of things beforehand. As someone who is very interested in behavioral economics, and is knowledgeable about the subject, I did have some challenges during the course.

By Bipanchee G

Jun 19, 2020

The course is beneficial. But the concepts are not explained elaborately. As such at certain point it becomes difficult to understand the concepts of the entire programme. This need to be taken care of by the course reachers and the administration.

Bipanchee Goswami. India.

By LUIS G

Apr 6, 2021

The course is really good! I would improve the evaluation process, because is really bad and long and the feedback (from quices) is not the best. The slides are useful but very long to follow and without a good structure, although the videos are short (and really good).

By Jiajun M

Feb 1, 2021

It is a nice course to venture beyond rational boundaries as an economics students. However, this course seems to be incomplete as the slides presented are much larger than the lecture given, and it caused some misunderstanding of terms by "self-studying" the content.

By Andreas o

Jun 22, 2020

Very interesting topic. The content is good, the videos are simply the reading of the PDFs and the Quizzes lack a further explanation. For a glimpse into the topic this course is excellent. Maybe the authors could pick up the feedback provided and enhance the course.

By sidhi g

Jul 7, 2019

A great course to start with to understand basics of Behavioural finance. I have one suggestion , Can you please add the names of researchers who have done the researches you mention in your course. It can help students who want to know more about it. THANK YOU !

By VISHAL J C

Apr 18, 2019

I enjoyed the course and the materials -the lectures were very good. However, i felt that the week 3 test was a bit tough since there were some terminologies which weren't discussed in the course or which had alternative names on the course. Overall, a thumbs up!

By Marcela

Jul 22, 2017

The course was very interesting, but I think that it was not covered all the information that it was asked in the last quiz. Therefore the only suggestions is to provide more information regarding the 3 week's topic.

But in the overall, the course was really good.

By Keerthana S

Mar 20, 2022

A very informative and interesting course! Loved the analysis and the real world examples it used! The structure felt a tad bit like an info dump which made it hard to correlate concepts with associated terminology. Otherwise, very glad that I took this up!

By Manorama K

Nov 5, 2024

Excellent Behavioral Finance course. Engaging content and interactive quizzes effectively conveyed complex concepts. Adding more case studies would enhance the course. Highly recommended, as it significantly improved my understanding of cognitive biases.