The Ten Commandments of Risk Leadership

We as humans are prone to a variety of wired-in cognitive mistakes in the way we interpret and react to risk-related information. This is highly consequential since the cognitive biases managers are exposed to in their day-to-day business erode the objectivity of their risk-related decisions, which ultimately hurts the financial well-being of their firms. This book seeks to develop risk literacy as a leadership skill. It helps managers develop the skills to improve managerial decision-making in regards to managing risk.

The last decades have offered various insights into how human nature often gets in the way of rational decision-making. This book is a valuable resource for insurance executives, chief risk officers, company leaders, and graduate students of risk management and risk psychology. It is the first behavioral risk management guide for managers and other interested readers - using examples from economic theory, behavioral finance, and game theory, it studies the hiddenforces that drive our decision-making processes under risk.

1. Introduction. - 2. Risk and Risk Perception: Why we are not Rational in the Face of Risk. - 3. Expected Utility, Prospect Theory, and the Allais Paradox: Why Reference Points are Important. - 4. Confirmation Bias and Anchoring Effect: Why the First Piece of Information is Key in Negotiations. - 5. Framing and the Ostrich effect: Why our Decisions depend on how Information is presented. - 6. Emotions and Zero Risk Bias: Why we make bad Decisions and overspend on Risk Avoidance. - 7. Endowment Effect and Status-Quo Bias: Why we Stick with Bad Decisions. - 8. Overconfidence and Self-Blindness: Why we think we are better than we actually are. - 9. The Low-Probability Puzzle: Why we insure our Cellphone but Not our Home. - 10. Fairness, Diversity, Groupthink, and Peer Effects: Why Other People matter for our Risky Decisions. - 11. Hindsight Bias: Why We Think we are Good Predictors even though we are not.