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    • Decision-Making under Uncertainty: An Introduction to Neuroeconomics and Neurofinance

      Semester & Location:       Fall Semester · Unimail Room M1160 · Tuesdays, 10:15–12:00

      Course Overview

      This foundational course explores decision-making under uncertainty through the combined lenses of economics/finance, psychology, and neuroscience. Rather than treating these as separate viewpoints, the course builds a shared vocabulary across disciplines — starting with how each field defines value, utility, reward, and wealth — and then examines the core methods (behavioral, neural, and computational) used to study decisions under uncertainty.
      Building on this foundation, the course turns to uncertainty itself: how risk, ambiguity, and surprise are formally distinguished, and how emotion, mood, context, and social interaction systematically shape decisions even when the information available stays the same.
      The course closes with a set of real-world applications — drawn from current research on topics such as trading, sustainable decision-making, and strategic foresight — each designed to show why a single disciplinary perspective is insufficient to fully understand complex decisions under uncertainty.
      A recurring theme throughout is individual variability: population-level models can describe group behavior well while telling us little about any one person, a distinction the course returns to in nearly every topic.
      Some material is covered in-class; other perspectives and deeper technical content are provided through self-guided online materials each week.
      This course lays the theoretical and methodological groundwork for the follow-up course offered in the spring, which focuses on recent research and applied case studies in neuroeconomics and neurofinance.

      Target Audience

      • Master’s and Ph.D. students in economics, finance, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science

      • Open to all students with an interest in decision-making and interdisciplinary approaches

      Format

      Workload: this is a 6 ECTS course, corresponding to approx. 150 to 180 hours in total. The workload is split into lectures, self-study, assignments, and reading exercises. Organize your weekly workload according to the following typical split: 

      • Weekly in-person lectures (90 minutes)

      • Weekly self-paced learning (2-3h) including short videos, podcasts, and exercises

      • Homework assignments (4 in total on weeks 3,5,7 & 9)

      Grading:

      Attendance and class participation (10%) + Assignments pass or fail (30%) + Final exam (60%)

      Learning Outcomes

      By the end of the course, students will be able to:

      1. Explain and compare how economics/finance, psychology, and neuroscience each formalize core concepts in decision-making under uncertainty (e.g., value, utility, reward).
      2. Describe the behavioral, neural, and computational methods used to study decisions under uncertainty, and identify which method is appropriate for a given question.
      3. Formally distinguish risk, ambiguity, and surprise, and explain how emotion, mood, context, and social factors modulate decisions independently of the information available.
      4. Analyze real-world cases of decision-making under uncertainty by integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives, recognizing where single-discipline accounts fall short.
      5. Recognize the limits of population-level models for understanding individual decision-making.
      6. Demonstrate the foundational knowledge needed for the spring follow-up course, which builds on these concepts to examine current research and applications in neuroeconomics and neurofinance.

      Instructors:

      • Kerstin Preuschoff : kerstin.preuschoff@unige.ch
      • Marco Lehmann : marco.lehmann@unige.ch

      Teaching Assistant:

      • Jean-Paul Nohra : jean-paul.nohra@unige.ch