MSc Behavioural Decision Making for Finance

This course is designed to make you uniquely competitive in a newly recognized employment niche. There is a deficit of individuals who both rigorously understand financial data and can predict when customers will become befuddled, bored or mistrustful of the communications issued by the financial world.

Drawing on the combined expertise of our Behavioural Science Centre and Stirling's Accounting and Finance Division, this program will train you in the skills needed to design customers’ journeys through the world of personal and corporate finance.

As well as giving you a thorough grounding in behavioural decision making generally (e.g. the role of emotions and attentional biases in judgment and decision making; the rich array of conscious and unconscious motivations that guide behaviour), our Masters course covers the core theories in financial decision-making. You'll develop the critical skills to assess investment strategies, product designs and regulations, plus the technical skills to develop and pilot test your ideas.

This course will give you the skills you'll need for a successful career in finance, insurance, trading, real estate, banking, regulation, consultancy and related areas.

Amplify Trading Boot Camp

The course also includes an innovative week-long global financial trading and training boot camp run by our partner Amplify. The boot camp won the CFA Institute Innovative Delivery of Education (IDEA) global award and gives you the chance to trade futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By letting you trade in real time, but with virtual money, the boot camp bridges the gap between an academic understanding of financial markets and how they function in practice. 

Award

Students on the MSc Behavioural Decision Making for Finance program will be eligible to win the Keep Scotland Beautiful Prize for Best Research in Behavioural Science relating to the Environment.

Student Managed Investment Fund

Our students have established a Student Managed Investment Fund (SMIF), with support of our academics within the Accounting and Finance Division. The SMIF allows you to gain practical experience of managing investments. A student-led project, it will help you to enhance your employability before you graduate – giving you exceptional practical understanding of theoretical aspects of investment valuation. Particular emphasis is placed on the principles of responsible investment, including the use of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria when selecting stocks. Find out more about the Student Managed Investment Fund, the regular guest speakers and how you can get involved at the SMIF website.

The University of Stirling Management School

At the University of Stirling Management School, the principle of responsible business, policy and practice is central to everything we do. This vision helps us to equip our students effectively with the skills to act as global citizens, capable of addressing the needs of society.

As a member of the Chartered Association for Business Schools, we have strong links with industry and were recently awarded the Small Business Charter for engagement with local and regional enterprise.

Learn from the experts

You’ll benefit from the vibrant research community within our Behavioural Science Centre, where there’s a regular programme of visiting speakers, leading academics, and policy and industry professionals. There’s also the opportunity work closely with course staff who have published in leading peer-reviewed outlets on:

• Forecasting
• Risk and how to communicate it
• Altruism
• Donating behaviour
• Survey design
• Selective Attention
• Priming, including Mortality Salience
• The optimal design of nudges
• The ethics of nudging
• The replication crisis in the social sciences

And have applied their research to an extensive set of areas including:

• Stock market forecasting
• Currency market forecasting
• insurance markets
• employment and HR
• pensions saving
• pensions decumulation
• real estate markets

The full-time course consists of two 15 week semesters of taught modules and a three month dissertation period.

The first semester will cover the core toolkit required for understanding the financial world and interpreting it through a behavioural lens. In the second semester you’ll focus in on specific financial sectors of your choosing. You’ll be taught how to apply behavioural science to uncover new insights in the financial realm.

The dissertation project requires you to write an investment prospectus that proposes a behaviourally informed investment portfolio or other financial product.