PhD alumna Kaisa Hytönen quoted in Wall Street Journal

How to deal with investment regrets? Considering this question, investigator Jason Zweig quotes PhD alumna Kaisa Hytönen in the Wall Street Journal.

Dr Hytönen obtained her PhD degree from Erasmus University in 2011, under the supervision of neuroeconomics <link people ale-smidts>Professor Ale Smidts. In her PhD research, Dr Hytönen focused on the neurological mechanisms that underpin choices in risky and social settings. She found that people tend to take excessive risk after both wins and losses, due to increasing affective arousal and decreasing control.

In his article in the Wall Street Journal, Zweig uses the research by Dr Hytönen and her co-authors – among whom ERIM members <link people guido-baltussen>Guido Baltussen, <link people martijn-van-den-assem>Martijn van den Assem and Professor Smidts – to place regrets of investors who are missing out on the tripling of the US stock market since 2009, into perspective.

Both investors who have missed out on the boom, and those profiting from it tremendously, are more likely to take a gamble now, follows from the research on path dependence in risky choice recently published by Dr Hytönen and her colleagues.

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