Nobel Prize-Winning Expert on Behavioral Economics Daniel Kahneman Dies at 90

by Palash Ghosh, Pensions & Investments, March 28, 2024: Bruce Jacobs remembers Daniel Kahneman as “a cognitive psychologist who gave birth to a thriving branch of economics based on human behavior rather than on standard expected utility theory.” Jacobs, who is quoted extensively in a remembrance of Kahneman’s Nobel Prize-winning career, said that Kahneman “found that when forced to make complex decisions in... uncertain situations, people were not coolly calculating rational agents. Rather, they tended to rely on heuristics—mental shortcuts and rules of thumb. Kahneman found that people could be irrational in systematic ways.” Their systematic behavior “could be incorporated into a forecasting framework,” Jacobs noted, “an insight that gave birth to the field of behavioral economics.”

Factor Investing Paper Wins Top Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award

by Rob Kozlowski, Pensions & Investments, March 1, 2024: The Best Article for the 25th Annual Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Awards was awarded to “Fact, Fiction, and Factor Investing” by Michele Aghassi, Cliff Asness, Charles Fattouche, and Tobias J. Moskowitz. The authors evaluate a variety of claims about factor... investing, confirming some and rebutting others. The article finds that factors receiving the most attention in academia are those based on solid theory and strong in-sample statistical significance. Bruce Jacobs, principal and co-founder of Jacobs Levy Equity Management, said “the authors are to be commended for sifting through the many claims about factor investing and presenting an assessment of its benefits and drawbacks.” All articles that appeared in the Journal of Portfolio Management from 2023 were eligible for the award and were voted on by subscribers.

Too Smart for Our Own Good by Bruce Jacobs – Translated into Chinese

Bruce Jacobs’s book, Too Smart for Our Own Good: Ingenious Investment Strategies, Illusions of Safety, and Market Crashes, has been translated into Chinese by China Machine Press.