Behavioral Finance Forum (BeFi) Library
Archived versions of past BeFi Web Seminars can be downloaded and viewed through your Web browser. Downloads are also available as PDFs (without audio) and video files. You can also subscribe to receive podcasts of BeFi Web Seminars.
Conference 2011
Conference 2010
Conference 2009
Welcome, Opening Remarks and Overview of Seminar Objectives
Electronic Disclosure: Using Modern Technology to Nudge
Encouraging Saving by Low Income Families
A Recommender System to Nudge Consumers to Choose Mortgages and Houses that Match their Risks and Tastes
Payday Lending and Bank Overdrafts
Should We Increase Dividend Taxation?
Facilitating Annuity Choices in the UK Personal Account System
Consumer Behavior in Relation to Truth in Lending Disclosures
Behaviorally Informed Financial Services Regulation
Conference 2008
2008 BeFi Conference Agenda
2008 Conference Summary
Helping Individuals Hedge Risks
Personalities of Financial Products
The Psychology and Marketing of Tontine-Based Retirement Income Solutions
Smart(er) Defaults
Simplifying Savings Plan Participation
Hedonic Arbitrage
Measuring Risk Perception and Risk Attitude in the Domain of Financial Investing
Conference 2007
2007 BeFi Conference Agenda
Improving Choices with Gentle Persuasion: The Power of Nudges
Credit Me with Savings: Using Preset Card Payments to Facilitate Investment
People Like Me
Cognitive Ability and Financial Preferences
Estimating Risk Tolerance: Legal Obligation and Competitive Advantage
Affective Communication: Engaging Emotion to Change Consumer Behavior When Cognitive Appeals Fail
Commitment Store
Resource Slack and Savings Behavior
Using Lotteries to Promote Saving
Concrete Budgeting
Brainstorming on Decumulation: The Annuity Puzzle
Web Seminars
Predictably Irrational
Discussing his book: "Predictably Irrational"
Defaults and Behavioral Outcomes
This presentation will discuss some of the evidence on how and why defaults impact behavioral outcomes. Which individuals are most impacted by defaults? How persistent are the effects of defaults? When is the use of defaults most appropriate? How do we think about optimal defaults? What are some alternatives to default in shaping behavior?
Collaborative Research Opportunities
Academics will present opportunities for collaboration. Industry members are encouraged to invite plan sponsors and advisors.
Financial Issues Facing Consumers
2008 Conference Highlights
Risk Questionnaires and
Behavioral Portfolios
Customer-Focused Investment Advice
What to do About Fuzzy Math and Red Ink?
We discuss a specific and treatable driver of consumer undersaving: the systematic tendency to underestimate compound yields. This tendency derives from a simple and general cognitive "bug" in how people intuit the mathematics of borrowing and saving decisions. The same bug that generates anti-saving bias also affects portfolio choice (discouraging long-term, high-yield investing), and makes certain types of discretionary borrowing seem deceptively cheap. So how do we convert these borrowers, low-yield investors, and other undersavers into profitable customers? We discuss strategies for marketing, product development, and regulation that are motivated by our findings and related research on behavioral financial decision making.
Identifying, Prioritizing, and Using Objectives for Complex Decisions
Most complex decisions involve multiple conflicting objectives. This presentation describes recent research and summarizes tested approaches to develop a more complete set of objectives and to provide reasoned value tradeoffs.
Decisions Not Made: How Defaults and Loss Aversion Affect Customers
We will examine two of the most surprising things that affect customers' choice: The option that is preselected before they make a decsion, or default, and loss aversion, the fact that consumers are more affected by losses than gains. Together, they have a suprisingly large effect on consumer behavior and satisfaction. We will include a couple of real world examples including field experiments with web sites.
Building Strong Brands
One of a firm's most valuable assets is the brand that it has invested in and developed over time. The difficulty and expense of introducing new products puts more pressure than ever on firms to skillfully manage their existing brands and leverage their assets to create successful new marketing opportunities. The concept of brand equity offers marketers a unified framework for building, managing and leveraging strong brands. This session will apply branding principles to the financial services industry, suggesting ways to conceptualize, understand, and measure the impact of brand equity in financial services.
The Unappreciated Impact of Decision Context
We will discuss some fundamental insights stemming from social and cognitive psychology and behavioral decision research in exploring the impact of minor contextual nuances on people's decision behavior. Whereas the standard account typically assumes that people make choices that reflect a well-established subjective preference order, the empirical research finds that people "construct" their decisions, and that such construction is influenced by contextual nuance, which can be accidental, normatively problematic, and typically under-appreciated.
Minds and Markets: Some Frontiers of Behavioral Finance
Excess profits might exist in markets because investors do not see profits or cannot bring themselves to make profitable investments. Recent studies of the nature of attention in financial markets, aspects of loss-aversion and other emotional impediments to profitable trade help explain existence of these opportunities. Recent work in "neuroeconomics" is also beginning to show neural bases of risky decision making which might someday inform financial practices at many levels.
The Affect Heuristic: Exploring the Psychological Foundation of Neural Economics
Applications of Fluency to Investment
Fluency - the subjective experience of ease or difficulty associated with performing a mental task - has been shown to have an influence on an astounding array of judgments. In this talk, Danny Oppenheimer discusses specific applications of fluency to finance. In particular, I will review evidence that the fluency of a company name influences the success of that company's stock immediately after IPO. I will then discuss how fluency impacts what pieces of information investors consider when making stock purchases.
The U.S. Individual Annuity Market
The issue of asset accumulation occupies a great deal of the financial industry's creative energy in helping consumers meet their life goals. However, demographic trends have focused financial institutions on decumulation strategies. Dr. Drinkwater will discuss market trends in annuities, including adoption rates, asset accumulation, product development, what has worked well and what hasn't.
Motivating Consumer Financial Behavior Through Choice-Set Characteristics
Web Seminar Podcasts
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