Organized by the HKUST-NYU Stern MS in Global Finance Program and CFA Japan 

Standard models of financial markets assume people behave rationally. Behavioral finance builds on this foundation by taking insights from cognitive psychology (e.g., overconfidence) to explain puzzling observations in asset prices that cannot be explained by reason. In this talk, Professor Utpal Bhattacharya from HKUST will give three examples from his research on behavioral finance: superstitious traders in Taiwan, haunted houses in Hong Kong, and left-digit fixated traders in the United States.

Speaker Bio

Professor Utpal Bhattacharya is Professor at HKUST, and the Executive Editor of the journal Financial Management.  He received his Bachelor of Technology at IIT, Kanpur, India; his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, India; and his Ph.D. from Columbia University, USA. Professor Bhattacharya previously taught at Indiana, Iowa, Chicago, MIT and Duke. He has taught summers in prestigious schools in Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey and UK.

Prof. Bhattacharya's research is about the dark side of financial markets. He believes, with apologies to Thomas Jefferson, that "the price of capitalism is eternal vigilance." His publications have appeared in top-tier finance journals like the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and the Journal of Business, top-tier accounting journals like The Accounting Review, and top-tier economics journals like the Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Law and Economics and the Journal of Monetary Economics.  His research has been featured in full-length stories more than a hundred times in various media across the world, including five times in the Economist. He wrote a satire about the legendary fraudster Madoff in the New York Times.  He has been invited to present his research in more than 225 institutions in 35 countries in 5 continents.

On May 16, 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the U.S. invited him to present the findings of his Journal of Finance paper that documents cross-subsidies in mutual fund families. He is now an official whistleblower.

Seminar Schedule

18:30     Registration and Light Dinner
19:00     Welcome and Introduction
19:10     Presentation
20:15     Q & A
20:30     End