Hersh Shefrin

Hersh Shefrin is one of the pioneers in the behavioral approach to economics and finance. The January 2001 issue of CFO magazine lists him among the academic stars of finance. A 2003 article in the American Economic Review listed him as one of the top fifteen economic theorists to have influenced empirical work.

In 2009, Hersh's book Beyond Greed and Fear was recognized by J.P. Morgan Chase as one of the top ten books published since 2000. This book was the first comprehensive treatment of behavioral finance, written for financial practitioners.

Hersh's other books focus sharply on the application of behavioral ideas to specific topics in finance and economics. The overarching theme in his books is what he calls "behavioralizing finance." Behavioral Corporate Finance is the first and only textbook dedicated to the behavioral issues in corporate finance. A Behavioral Approach to Asset Pricing investigates the behavioral structure of the financial market's DNA, technically known as the pricing kernel. Ending the Management Illusion describes how organizations can grapple with their psychological gremlins. His latest book, Behavioral Risk Management, provides risk managers with psychological tools that they can integrate with the quantitative concepts that form the foundation of their work.

Hersh received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 1974. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Oulu, Finland. He is frequently interviewed by the press and his work was profiled by BBC-TV in February 2014. He intermittently writes for The Wall Street Journal, blogs for Forbes and The Huffington Post, and can be followed on Twitter at @HershShefrin.