If anyone is qualified to unify the seemingly disparate subjects of financial markets and neurology, it’s John Coates, a senior

admin2021-09-17  11

问题    If anyone is qualified to unify the seemingly disparate subjects of financial markets and neurology, it’s John Coates, a senior research fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf is a powerful distillation of his work and an important step in the ongoing struggle to free economics from rational-actor theory.
   
   Coates’s book argues that irrationality rules in times of boom and bust, and that in both cases investors get caught up in either irrational exuberance or irrational pessimism. That is, "investors during bubbles seem to come equipped with special eyewear that permits them to view all economic news as bullish." On the other hand, in the wake of a severe downturn, when investors are buffeted by bad news and disastrous trades, they retreat into their shells.
   Both of these tendencies put the market at risk, and neither jibes with the long-running theory that investors act rationally in seeking out what benefits them the most, that monetary policy can help steer us away from calamity. Under this view, faced with a bubble or a collapse, the Federal Reserve can alter interest rates to stabilize things, and investors will react rationally to the new resultant prices, putting the markets back on sound footing. But reality isn’t nearly so neat—the human brain and body get in the way. "Under the influence of pathologically elevated hormones," Coates writes, "the trading community at the peak of a bubble or in the pit of a crash may effectively become a clinical population."
   Coates emphasizes the tight connection between brain and body. Every potential opportunity, every glimmer of bad news, registers in primal circuits as a jolt of pleasure or an activation of the fight-or-flight system.
   The book is well executed and makes its argument convincingly, even if a lot of it won’t be new to those who have read the recent spate of popular books on neurology and human decision making. It’s notable not just for the specifics of its subject, but for its place in the broader constellation of books and articles slowly chipping away at rational-actor theory.
   Plato argued that mind and body are two distinct entities, and this intellectual legacy resonates in the rational-choice model. Coates is part of a broad, ongoing intellectual process to partially undo Plato and to turn us toward Aristotle, who saw mind and body as inextricably linked (which greatly complicates the notion of a separate, dispassionate mind rationally making decisions). Coates and a small army of psychologists and behavioral economists are trying to guide us out of the dark jungle into which the rational-actor model has led us into.
John Coates believes that____.

选项 A、gut feeling plays an important role in decision making
B、financial activities are mainly driven by irrationality.
C、investors are apt to take risky actions during recessions
D、investors tend to be rational profit-maximizers

答案A

解析 细节题。第二段详细介绍了高德斯的观点:在经济繁荣与萧条期, “非理性”主导人们的行为,投资者在泡沫经济时期将所有金融信息都视作乐观的;在经济严重衰退期、饱受坏消息和贸易灾难打击时,则会缩进“壳里”怯于行动。可见,高德斯认为投资者的直觉、情感会影响其决策,故A项正确。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/GZ1Z777K
0

最新回复(0)