Degree thesis deals with behavioral finance with a focus on behavior and psychology of an individual investor. The first part is devoted to the prospect theory that is a descriptive model of behavior of economic agents under the conditions of uncertainty and stands in a stark contrast with the traditional normative expected utility theory. The second part is devoted to the group of behavioral biases that are distortions of human thinking and judgment documented by cognitive psychology. These biases are difficult to eliminate and lead to a biased perception, inaccurate judgments and illogical interpretations. The third and final part is devoted to a questionnaire survey whose goal was to find out whether financial market participants behave according to the axioms of the expected utility theory or whether they systemically deviate from the axioms of this normative theory. The second goal of the survey was to confirm or disprove inferences of academic studies about existence of behavioral biases.

Este estudo investiga a ocorrência o Efeito Certeza, Efeito Reflexo e Excesso de confiança, das Finanças Comportamentais, na análise da tomada de decisão dos investidores institucionais de títulos de securitização, compostos por CRI (Certificado de Recebíveis Imobiliários), CRA (Certificado de Recebíveis do Agronegócio) e cotas de FIDC (Fundo de Investimento em Direito Creditório). A Teoria Moderna de Finanças não mais se apresenta como suficiente diante das anomalias existentes no mercado e, devido a isto, as Finanças Comportamentais apresentam-se como um complemento, explicando a atitude do investidor diante de uma situação de risco. Para tanto, foi realizado um estudo de caso com quatro investidores institucionais em títulos de securitização no ano de 2017. Foi aplicado um questionário que identifica a presença ou não do efeito certeza, efeito reflexo, e excesso de confiança. Foi constatado que as quatro empresas não apresentaram o Efeito Reflexo e não apresentam o Excesso de Confiança, sendo apresentado apenas o Efeito Certeza nestas empresas. Os resultados contribuem para uma melhor compreensão do investidor institucional nos títulos de securitização, que são considerados ainda recentes no mercado brasileiro. / This study investigates the occurrence of the Certainty Effect, Reflection Effect and Overconfidence of Behavioral Finances in the analysis of the decision-making of institutional investors in securities, composed of CRI (Certificate of Real Estate Receivables), CRA Agribusiness) and quotas of FIDC (Investment Fund in Credit Right). The Modern Finance Theory no longer presents itself as sufficient in the face of the existing market anomalies and, because of this, the Behavioral Finances are a complement, explaining the attitude of the investor in the face of a risk situation. For that, a case study was carried out with four institutional investors in securitization in the year 2017. A questionnaire was applied that identifies the presence or not of the certainty effect, reflex effect, and overconfidence. It was verified that the four companies did not present the Reflex Effect and did not present the Overconfidence, only being presented the Certainty Effect in these companies. The results contribute to a better understanding of the institutional investor in securitization securities, which are still considered recent in the Brazilian market.

[pt] Este trabalho tem o objetivo de aplicar os conceitos das Finanças Comportamentais (FC) através da Teoria do Prospecto na tomada de decisões de investidores no Brasil. Os primeiros estudos publicados sobre o tema são datados de 1979, feitos por Daniel Kahneman e Amos Tversky. As Finanças comportamentais surgem para contestar a Hipótese dos Mercados Eficientes (HME), na qual os investidores são completamente racionais e que, no processo de tomada de decisão, são capazes de analisar a totalidade dos dados disponí­veis e que todos os agentes do mercado possuem o mesmo número de informações. Este novo modelo incorpora aspectos da psicologia e da sociologia na busca de uma maior compreensão do processo decisório no mercado financeiro. O presente estudo replicou o questionário do artigo seminal de Kahneman e Tversky (1979) em 40 pessoas que trabalham ou já trabalharam no mercado financeiro. Para análise destes dados foram realizadas comparações com os resultados encontrados por Kahneman e Tversky (1979), Cruz, Kimura e Krauter (2003) e Rogers, Securato, Ribeiro e Araújo (2007). A amostra estudada indica que os decisores tendem a serem avessos ao risco no campo dos ganhos e propensos aos riscos no campo das perdas. / [en] The present study aims to apply the concepts of Behavioral Finance (BF) using the Prospect Theory in decision-making by investors in Brazil. The first published studies on the topic are from 1979, by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The Behavioral Finance emerged to contest the Efficient Capital Market (EFM) Theory, where investors are thought to act rationally in the process of decision-making, taking into account all available data, and financial agents share the same information. This new model intertwines psychological and sociological aspects seeking a greater understanding in financial decision-making. The present study applied the same questionnaire used by Kahneman & Tversky (1979) in their seminal paper to 40 subjects, working on or retired from the financial market. In the data analysis, results were compared to those of Kahneman & Tversky (1979); Cruz, Kimura & Krauter (2003); and Rogers, Securato, Ribeiro & Araújo (2007). From our analysis we find that investors run from taking risks while generating gains and are prone to assume those risks while losing capital.

As descobertas relacionadas à neurociência e aos métodos de coleta e análise de dados neurofisiológicos têm fomentado discussões sobre a aplicação desses aspectos em outras campos do conhecimento, dentre eles, o da comunicação. Este estudo tem como objetivo identificar e aferir processos neurais associados à avaliação emocional positiva e negativa de campanhas de segurança no trânsito, de modo a relacioná-los aos apontamentos trazidos pela Prospect Theory (ou Teoria Prospectiva), de que as pessoas tendem a responder de modo diferente ao se alterar apenas a forma de apresentação de um mesmo problema. Tal fato é especialmente importante na comunicação de riscos, em que são frequentemente utilizadas abordagens emocionais negativas como forma de discurso persuasivo. Deste modo, fez-se uma aplicação desses pressupostos ao campo da comunicação, sendo elaboradas duas campanhas experimentais de segurança no trânsito: uma contendo uma perspectiva emocional negativa e outra contendo uma perspectiva emocional positiva. Essas campanhas foram apresentadas em laboratório a 24 voluntários, os quais tiveram sua atividade cortical aferida pelo eletroencefalograma (EEG) e analisada do ponto de vista quantitativo e qualitativo, a fim de verificar uma assimetria frontal hemisférica de ondas alfa e teta nas duas condições, sugerida pela literatura como sendo atrelada a processos emocionais positivos e negativos. Como principais resultados, destacam-se a ocorrência de processos assimétricos significativos tanto na comparação entre as condições (i) neutra e negativa como nas condições (ii) neutra e positiva e (iii) positiva versus negativa, resultados que variaram conforme método de análise empregado. Em termos conclusivos, nota-se a verificação dos processos assimétricos previstos na literatura, porém, com grande variabilidade de amplitude e ocorrência no tempo entre os indivíduos, indicando que a metodologia de coleta com o EEG pode constituir uma forma complementar, e não isolada, de investigação dos processos comunicacionais em relação aos métodos tradicionais de pesquisa qualitativa e quantitativa empregados no campo da comunicação. / The findings related to neuroscience and methods of collection and analysis of neurophysiological data have encouraged discussions on the implementation of those aspects in other fields of knowledge, including communication. This study aims to identify and assess neural processes associated with positive and negative emotional evaluation of traffic safety campaigns, in order to relate them to the Prospect Theory considerations, that people tend to respond differently by changing only the presentation of the same problem. This fact is especially important in the risk communication scenario, which often uses the negative approach as a form of persuasive discourse. Thus, there was an application of these assumptions to the field of communication: two traffic safety campaigns were made: one containing a negative emotional perspective and another containing a positive emotional outlook. These campaigns were presented to 24 subjects in the laboratory, which had their cortical activity measured by electroencephalography (EEG) and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, in order to verify a frontal asymmetry of alpha and theta bands in both conditions, suggested by the literature as being linked to positive and negative emotional processes. The main results highlight the occurrence of significant asymmetric activation both in the comparison between (i) neutral and negative conditions as (ii) neutral and positive conditions and (iii) positive versus negative, results that varied according to method of analysis employed. In conclusive terms, there was a verification of asymmetric process verified in the literature, however, with notable variability in amplitude and occurrence in time between individuals, indicating that the methodology of EEG can complement, not in an isolated form, investigations of communication processes in relation to traditional methods of qualitative and quantitative research in the communication field.

O efeito disposição, originalmente proposto por Shefrin e Statman (1985), preconiza que os investidores tendem a vender ações com lucro em um curto período de tempo e manter ações com prejuízo por um longo período de tempo. A despeito da ampla gama de evidências sobre o assunto, as razões que levariam os investidores a manifestar esse viés comportamental ainda é motivo de uma controvérsia importante entre motivações racionais e comportamentais. Neste trabalho, o objetivo foi testar duas motivações comportamentais concorrentes para explicar o efeito disposição: a teoria perspectiva e o viés da reversão à média. Para cumprir esse objetivo, foi feita uma análise das transações mensais de compra e venda de uma amostra de 51 fundos de investimento em ações brasileiros, no período de 2002 a 2008. A análise envolveu a estimação de dois modelos de regressão de variável dependente qualitativa. O primeiro consistiu em um modelo logit binário cujo propósito foi determinar a probabilidade de um gestor realizar um ganho ou uma perda de capital em razão de variáveis de retorno das ações. O segundo foi um modelo logit ordenado cujo objetivo foi verificar a existência de uma relação entre as variáveis de retorno e o volume monetário vendido das ações. Em ambos os modelos, os parâmetros estimados para as variáveis de retorno das ações foram interpretados como um coeficiente de disposição, sendo que a proposição desse coeficiente consistiu na principal contribuição da pesquisa. Os resultados dos modelos estimados trouxeram evidências de que a teoria perspectiva parece permear o processo decisório dos gestores dos fundos analisados. Já no caso da hipótese de que o efeito disposição é decorrente do viés da reversão à média, não foi possível corroborá-la com base nos resultados aqui relatados. / The disposition effect, originally proposed by Shefrin and Statman (1985), predicts that investors tend to sell winning stocks too soon and ride losing stocks too long. Despite the wide range of research evidence about this issue, the reasons that lead investors to act this way is still subject to much controversy between rational and behavioral explanations. In this thesis, the main goal was to test two competing behavioral motivations to justify the disposition effect: prospect theory and mean reversion bias. To achieve this goal, an analysis of monthly transactions for a sample of 51 Brazilian stock funds from 2002 to 2008 was conducted. The analysis involved the estimation of two regression models with qualitative dependent variable. The first one consisted of a binary logit model whose purpose was to set the probability of a manager to realize a capital gain or loss as a function of the stock return. The second one was an ordered logit model whose objective was to verify the existence of a relationship between stock returns and the monetary volume sold. In both models, the estimated parameters for the stock return variables were interpreted as a disposition coefficient and the proposition of this coefficient was the main contribution of the research. The results of the estimated models brought evidence that prospect theory seems to guide the decision making process of the managers of the analyzed funds. The hypothesis that the disposition effect is due to mean reversion bias could not be confirmed based on the results reported here.

Thesis deals with Prospect Theory and with its findings when making decisions under risk which is called four-fold pattern. In theoretical part is shortly mentioned the field of Behavioral finance and further described original Prospect Theory and also its modified version called Cumulative Prospect Theory. The main goal of the practical part is to confirm on the basis of questionnaire between different kinds of college graduates the four-fold pattern, identify between 3 segments differences and make the final conclusion whether the type of college education has an impact on four-fold pattern.

The environment is abundant with visual information. Each moment, this information competes for representation in the brain. From billboards and pop-up ads to smart phones and flat screens, in modern society our attention is constantly drawn from one salient object to the next. Learning how to focus on the objects that are most important for the current task is a major developmental hurdle. Fortunately, rewards help us to learn what is important by providing feedback signals to the brain. Sometimes, in adolescence for example, reward seeking can become the pre-potent response. This can ultimately lead to risky and impulsive behaviors that have devastating consequences. Until recently, little has been known about how rewards operate to influence the focus of attention. In this document, I first demonstrate the robustness of various behavioral paradigms designed to measure reward processing in vision. I found that even mundane rewards, such as images of money, are effective enough to prime the attentional system on the basis of value. Remarkably, this effect extended to images of Monopoly money. This observation suggests that whole classes of visual stimuli, such as food, pornography, commercial logos, corporate brands, or money, each with its own reward salience value, are likely vying for representation in the brain. This work has implications for the growing digital economy as it suggests that novel value systems, such as the digital currency Bitcoin, could eventually become as psychologically relevant as physical currency provided sufficient use and exposure. Likewise, this work has implications for gamification in the industrial setting. Next, I examined the sensitivity of the system to make optimal economic decisions. When faced with an economic choice normative theories of decision-making suggest that the economic actor will choose the response that affords the greatest expected utility. Contrary to this account, I developed a new behavioral paradigm (reward contingent capture) and reveal that the attentional homunculus is a fuzzy mathematician. Specifically, I found that low-level attentional processes conform to the same probability distortions observed in prospect theory. This finding supports a unified value learning mechanism across several domains of cognition and converges with evidence from monkey models. Then, I demonstrate the influence of rewards on high-order search parameters. I found that images of money can implicitly encourage observers to preferentially adopt one of two search strategies – one that values salience versus one that values goals. Together, my results expose two distinct ways in which the very same rewards can affect attentional behavior – by tuning the salience of specific features and by shaping global search mode settings. Lastly, I draw from my empirical results to present a unified model of the manifold role of rewards on visual attention. This model makes clear predictions for clinical applications of rewarded attention paradigms because it incorporates a dimension of complexity upon which learning processes can operate on attention. Thus, future work should acknowledge how individual traits such as developmental trajectory, impulsivity, and risk-seeking factors differentially interact with low- and high-level attentional processes. In sum, this document puts forward the notion that rewards serve a compelling role in visual awareness. The key point however is not that rewards can have an effect on attention but that due to the nature of visual processing, reward signals are likely always tuning attention. In this way we can consider reward salience an attentional currency. This means then that deciding where to attend is a matter of gains and losses.

<p><strong>Title:</strong> Yes, but…<em> - How changes in banks in Västerbotten are linked to the current financial crisis, but are still normal organizational development</em></p><p><strong>Background: </strong>In the beginning of the 90’s, there was a financial crisis in Sweden which hit Swedish banks hard. The Swedish bank Gota banken went bankrupt and Nordbanken was taken over by the government, in large part because of their apathetic reactions to the situation they were so surprised to find themselves in. Today, almost 20 years later, the banks of Sweden find themselves in a new crisis. Because of the important position banks have in society, it is extremely important that they remain stable and have the capacity to ride out a crisis situation comfortably. As the banks did not show any crisis management strategy or skills in the 1992 crisis, it is relevant to explore if the previous experience has given Swedish banks the ability to handle a crisis situation in an efficient way.</p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong> The purpose of this study is to apply organizational development theory, crisis management theory and adversity reaction theory to the primary data collected from the interviews with the banks and through that analyze if Swedish banks are acting to prevent the financial crisis from affecting them badly.</p><p><strong>Method:</strong> The study has a hermeneutical approach and was carried out by interviewing managers from the five major banks in Västerbotten. The primary data collected has been analyzed to get an understanding of the current development in the banks and its possible link to the financial crisis.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>We found that banks are constantly changing in order to keep up with their competitors, changes in technology, society and the increasing demands from customers. The current events and changes in the banks are undoubtedly linked to the financial crisis, it has accelerated change, it has slowed down ongoing processes and it has facilitated harder decisions and less popular changes. But the crisis has not caused drastic changes in the organizations or their way of doing business. In fact, it can be said that the changes due to the financial crisis is normal organizational development, as the banks have responded to it in much the same fashion as they do to all changes in the external environment.</p><p><strong>Key words:</strong> crisis management, organizational development, threat rigidity, prospect theory, financial crisis</p>

Title: Yes, but… - How changes in banks in Västerbotten are linked to the current financial crisis, but are still normal organizational development Background: In the beginning of the 90’s, there was a financial crisis in Sweden which hit Swedish banks hard. The Swedish bank Gota banken went bankrupt and Nordbanken was taken over by the government, in large part because of their apathetic reactions to the situation they were so surprised to find themselves in. Today, almost 20 years later, the banks of Sweden find themselves in a new crisis. Because of the important position banks have in society, it is extremely important that they remain stable and have the capacity to ride out a crisis situation comfortably. As the banks did not show any crisis management strategy or skills in the 1992 crisis, it is relevant to explore if the previous experience has given Swedish banks the ability to handle a crisis situation in an efficient way. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to apply organizational development theory, crisis management theory and adversity reaction theory to the primary data collected from the interviews with the banks and through that analyze if Swedish banks are acting to prevent the financial crisis from affecting them badly. Method: The study has a hermeneutical approach and was carried out by interviewing managers from the five major banks in Västerbotten. The primary data collected has been analyzed to get an understanding of the current development in the banks and its possible link to the financial crisis. Conclusion: We found that banks are constantly changing in order to keep up with their competitors, changes in technology, society and the increasing demands from customers. The current events and changes in the banks are undoubtedly linked to the financial crisis, it has accelerated change, it has slowed down ongoing processes and it has facilitated harder decisions and less popular changes. But the crisis has not caused drastic changes in the organizations or their way of doing business. In fact, it can be said that the changes due to the financial crisis is normal organizational development, as the banks have responded to it in much the same fashion as they do to all changes in the external environment. Key words: crisis management, organizational development, threat rigidity, prospect theory, financial crisis

Drug addiction is a complex behavioral disorder that has been extensively studied in an attempt to uncover its underlying biological mechanisms. This paper contributes to the literature on addiction by demonstrating that addiction is a result of an improperly functioning decision making process. The areas of the brain that are most implicated in decision making demonstrate significant overlap with those areas most affected by addiction. Specifically, the limbic structures of the brain (amygdala, basal ganglia, and mesolimbic reward pathway) and the prefrontal cortices (orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex) are discussed in relation to their involvement in prominent theories of decision making such as Prospect Theory and the Somatic Marker Hypothesis. This paper will then use the above knowledge regarding the specific brain mechanisms that control decision making and apply it to neurobiological theories of addiction. The view that addiction is a behavioral disorder that results primarily from a degradation of the brain mechanisms involved in decision making processes is important to consider because it can help provide a concrete approach to developing more individualized and effective treatment programs in the future.