Traditional Economists or Self-help authors?
So the question is whether popular finance books give the same valuable advice as academic economists.
Economist & Finance professor James J. Choi was so interested in this question that he surveyed the 50 most popular personal finance books on Goodreads.
1⃣ Economists
You might assume that economics professors have more sophisticated perspectives than self-help authors: perhaps popular authors are mistaken & their suggestions are oversimplified or ill-informed.
Academics in finance & economics who employ a traditional way of modeling human behavior, often known as ‘the rational actor model’ (which is most associated with neoclassical economics), are grounded in math & theory about optimal decision-making for rational agents.
They are often trying to answer the question “what should the perfectly rational person do?”
But we humans – that’s you & I – are the living proof that we are hardly rational.
2⃣ Self-help Authors
Their recommendations are more focused on real human behavior
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