He is a native of Belgium and an alumnus of Hagelstein. He received a degree as Handelsingenieur from Universitaire Faculteiten Sint-Ignatius Antwerpen. He subsequently earned an M.B.A. from the Catholic University of Louvain, a master's degree in Public Administration from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Cornell University. Alongside Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Hersh Shefrin, Meir Statman, Robert Shiller and Richard Thaler De Bondt helped define the field of behavioral finance long before it became popular. He has investigated key research questions such as the intuitive tendency of naïve investors to extrapolate past trends in stock prices and corporate earnings, market overreaction, bubbles, the excessive self-confidence of traders, and their herding instinct. His work has been published in numerous academic journals and De Bondt has been cited in many European and U.S. news publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Finanz und Wirtschaft, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, De Standaard, Trends, BNQ Perspectives on banking, Elliott Wave International, LESSAC, De Tijd, the Wall Street Journal and others. Professor De Bondt has been a guest on various TV programs including PBS and Kanaal Z with Veronique Goossens. He speaks at many conferences organized by universities and government agencies. He has served on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including the Journal of Behavioral Finance, the Financial Analysts Journal, the British Accounting Review, the Journal of Empirical Finance, and Behavioral Science & Policy.
Published books / monographs
Financial Accounting and Investment Management, edited book in two volumes, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009
The Psychology of World Equity Markets, edited book in two volumes, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005
Earnings Forecasts and Share Price Reversals, AIMR, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1992
Selected published articles
"Time-varying Risk Behavior and Prior Investment Outcomes: Evidence from Italy," Judgment and Decision-Making, September 2018, 2018.
"Mind Over Money: The Behavioral Revolution in Finance, " Revue Bancaire et Financière, 2018
"Looking Into the Future: How Investors Forecast the Stock Market, " in A. Lewis, Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Be-havior, Cambridge University Press, 2017
"Asset Bubbles: Insights from Behavioral Finance, " in Douglas D. Evanoff, George G. Kaufman and A.G. Malliaris, New Perspectives on Asset Price Bubbles: Theory, Evidence, and Policy, Oxford University Press, 2012
"The Crisis of 2008 and Financial Reform," Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, 2010
"Style Investing Within the S&P-500 Index,", Journal of Empirical Finance, 2004
"Portrait Psychologique de l’Investisseur Individuel en Europe,", Revue d'Economie Financiėre, 2002
