For Joseph Engelberg, the decision to pursue a
career in finance was an easy one to make – it meant he would be continuing the
“family business.” A native of San Diego, the Rady School professor of
finance’s father worked as an accountant and introduced him to finance early on
in his childhood, sparking an interest in business and leading him to earn a
B.A. in mathematics and a B.S. in business administration at the University of
Southern California (USC).
While academia was not Engelberg’s initial
field of interest in college, he developed a curiosity for it when he worked as
a research specialist under one of his USC professors at the Securities and
Exchange Commission.
“It was eye-opening professionally and
personally,” Engelberg said. “I’m thankful for the experiences that I was able
to have because of that opportunity.”
After being exposed to the world of academia,
Engleberg decided to embrace his newfound interest in research by pursuing a
Ph.D. in Finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
While there, he became interested in observing the behavior of individuals
within the stock market, later publishing a paper with fellow students on the
effect of Jim Cramer’s show “Mad Money” had on stock pricing. His research has
been referenced in national publications such as the New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, , and the Chicago Sun Times.
Engleberg’s first teaching position was as an
assistant professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flager Business
School, where he taught finance for three years. Engelberg would later return
to San Diego and commit to a teaching position at the Rady School of Management
because he enjoyed the school’s startup environment.
“I’ve had a chance to really influence the
direction of things with the school,” Engelberg said. “It was a unique
opportunity to merge my interests in finance with the exciting world of
entrepreneurship.”
Engelberg’s main area of research is
behavioral finance, which combines finance with insights about individual
behavior from psychology. Traditionally, finance academics have thought
investors act rationally when making financial decisions. Behavioral
finance researchers like Engelberg think that investors are not completely
rational and make mistakes which are predicted in the psychology
literature. Engelberg and other behavioralists believe these mistakes can
affect trading and prices in the stock market.
For anyone interested in behavioral finance or
behavioral economics more generally, Engelberg recommends reading the books,
“Thinking Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, and “Misbehaving,” by
Richard Thaler, as they introduce the topic and describe ways in which the
research has been applied to real life.
Other fields of interest Engelberg enjoys
pursuing include financial media, information processing, and financial
networks.
The Family Business of Finance was last modified: March 21st, 2019 by Matthew Wu