In 1992 the SEA convened its meetings jointly with the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics at UC Irvine to explore how economic theory from the new institutional economics had been incorporated into anthropological research. Far from being theoretically monolithic, economics has long had its own internal critics, the SASE being only one such group that has received attention from other disciplines. Although economic anthropologists therefore might feel comfortable citing works by Veblen, Coase, Williamson and North, they are much less likely to be aware of names such as Thaler, Shiller, or the late Amos Tversky. Contrary to the new institutional economics which developed from internal debates about property rights, firms, and transaction costs, behavioral finance has emerged largely as a result of the failure of mathematical financial models, notably the efficient market hypothesis of Modern Portfolio Theory or MPT, to explain patterns of financial market behavior.
Behavioral finance tends to remain aloof from questions of political economy.
Instead, the field gravitates towards experimental psychology and other cognitive sciences which focus on decision-making models of market actors. Similar types of research have been conducted on attitudes towards risk aversion, mental accounting, investment heuristics and overconfidence among investors. At first glance much of behavioral finance seems to be both too narrow in scope and experiment-driven for anthropology, but there do appear to be opportunities for dialogue. Studies have been conducted within securities firms on the organizational culture of dealers and managers, and how this has influenced investment decisions. In light of the above, it would not be surprising to find anthropologists already conducting research on financial markets.