American Finance Association 2020 Presidential Address

Presentation Slides, Integrated Transcript with Slides, and the Paper

  1. Presentation Slides

    Social Transmission Bias in Economics and Finance:
    Presidential Address, American Finance Association 2020 Annual Meetings

    These are the presentation slides of the American Finance Association’s Presidential Address of January 4, 2020. The address is based on the paper “Social Transmission Bias in Economics and Finance,” to be posted when available. A transcript of the talk, integrated with the presentation slides, is also available at TRANSCRIPT

  2. Integrated Transcript with Slides

    Social Transmission Bias in Economics and Finance:
    Transcript of the Presidential Address with Integrated Presentation Slides

    This is the transcript, integrated with presentation slides, of the American Finance Association’s Presidential Address of January 4, 2020. The address is based on the paper “Social Transmission Bias in Economics and Finance,” to be posted when available. A document containing just the slides is also available at SLIDES

  3. The Paper

    Presidential Address:
    Social Transmission Bias in Economics and Finance

    I discuss an intellectual revolution, social economics and finance: the study of the social processes that shape economic thinking and behavior. This emerging field recognizes that people observe and talk to each other. A key, underexploited building block of social economics and finance is social transmission bias: a systematic directional shift in signals or ideas in social transactions. I use five “fables” (models) to illustrate the novelty and scope of the transmission bias approach, and offer several emergent themes.  For example, social transmission bias compounds recursively, which can help explain booms, bubbles, return anomalies, and swings in economic sentiment.

    A transcript of the talk, and presentation slides, are available at TRANSCRIPT and SLIDES.

Keywords: social transmission bias, social economics, social finance, behavioral economics, behavioral finance, social networks, social learning, social influence, information percolation, biased percolation, epidemiology, SIR model compartmental models, visibility bias, self-enhancing transmission bias, simplistic thinking, memes, cultural evolution