Professor Nicholas Barberis Presents the Annual Lecture at the 2025 American Finance Association Conference

The American Finance Association Meeting, which takes place every January, is the largest gathering of academic financial economists in the United States. Each year, the incoming President of the Association chooses a speaker to deliver that year’s Annual Lecture. Speakers in previous years have included recipients of the Clark Medal, such as Daron Acemoglu and Emi Nakamura, as well as recipients of MacArthur “Genius” grants, such as Sendhil Mullainathan.

This year, the incoming President selected Nicholas Barberis, a professor in SOM’s finance group, to deliver the Lecture. The title of his talk was “Behavioral Finance at 40: Progress, Open Questions, and New Directions.” The talk made the case that behavioral finance ideas are central to understanding important financial phenomena. It covered three related topics: investor beliefs about returns and cash flows; investor risk attitudes, also known as investor preferences; and the deeper cognitive foundations of beliefs and preferences. The one-hour talk, which is accessible to both academics and non-academics with finance training, was recorded and is available on YouTube.