ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Last Monday on March 25, a conference was held by Meir Statman, Glenn Klimek Professor of Finance at Santa Clara University organized by CFA Society Uruguay.

Behavioral finance is for normal people, like you and me, who are not irrational; we are mostly intelligent and usually “normal-smart.” However, we can be “normal-foolish” and misled by cognitive errors, such as hindsight bias and overconfidence, as well as emotional errors, such as exaggerated fear and unrealistic hope.

Professor Statman will discuss behavioral finance lessons by examining what we want and how we behave as normal consumers, savers, investors, and managers when making financial choices, understanding how our behavior affects financial markets.

The second generation of behavioral finance knowledge recognizes the full range of normal wants and benefits, distinguishing normal wants from errors and offering guidance on using shortcuts. Our “normal wants” provide answers to important finance questions, including saving and spending, portfolio construction, asset pricing, and market efficiency.

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BIOGRAPHY 

Meir Statman is the Glenn Klimek Professor of Finance at Santa Clara University. His research focuses on behavioral finance. He attempts to understand how investors and managers make financial decisions and how these decisions are reflected in financial markets. His most recent book is “Finance for Normal People: How Investors and Markets Behave,” published by Oxford University Press.

The questions he addresses in his research include: What are investors’ wants and how can we help investors balance them? What are investors’ cognitive and emotional shortcuts and how can we help them overcome cognitive and emotional errors? How are wants, shortcuts and errors reflected in choices of saving, spending, and portfolio construction? How are they reflected in asset pricing and market efficiency?

Meir’s research has been published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, and many other journals.  The research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Research Foundation of the CFA Institute, and the Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA).

Meir is a member of the Advisory Board of the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Journal of Wealth Management, the Journal of Retirement, the Journal of Investment Consulting, and the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Behavioral Finance, and the Journal of Investment Management and a recipient of a Batterymarch Fellowship, a William F. Sharpe Best Paper Award, a Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Outstanding Article Award, a Davis Ethics Award, a Moskowitz Prize for best paper on socially responsible investing, a Matthew R. McArthur Industry Pioneer Award, three Baker IMCA Journal Awards, and three Graham and Dodd Awards.  Meir was named as one of the 25 most influential people by Investment Advisor. He consults with many investment companies and presents his work to academics and professionals in many forums in the U.S. and abroad.

Meir received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and his B.A. and M.B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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