Improving Investment Behavior with Pre-Commitment

Abstract

In aggregate, investors succumb to human temptation to buy high and sell low. Academic research on pre-commitment provides a framework for investors to support contrarian behavior and reinforce defenses against poor investment practice such as herding. Examples of such reinforcements include psychological pre-commitment, such as priming investors with their own beliefs prior to making a decision, or behavioral pre-commitment, such as requiring a higher voting threshold to make herding decisions. An investment committee can use these tools in the present to nudge its future behavior in a desired contrarian direction.