Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study and describe several biases in investment decision-making through the review of research articles in the area of behavioral finance. It also includes some of the analytical and foundational work and how this has progressed over the years to make behavioral finance an established and specific area of study. The study includes behavioral patterns of individual investors, institutional investors and financial advisors. Design/methodology/approach The research papers are analyzed on the basis of searching the keywords related to behavioral finance on various published journals, conference proceedings, working papers and some other published books. These papers are collected over a period of year’s right from the time when the most introductory paper was published (1979) that contributed this area a basic foundation till the most recent papers (2016). These articles are segregated into biases wise, year-wise, country-wise and author wise. All research tools that have been used by authors related to primary and secondary data have also been included into our table. Findings A new era of understanding of human emotions, behavior and sentiments has been started which was earlier dominated by the study of financial markets. Moreover, this area is not only attracting the, attention of academicians but also of the various corporates, financial intermediaries and entrepreneurs thus adding to its importance. The study is more inclined toward the study of individual and institutional investors and financial advisors’ investors but the behavior of intermediaries through which some of them invest should be focused upon, narrowing down population into various variables, targeting the expanding economies to reap some unexplained theories. This study has identified 17 different types of biases and also summarized in the form of tables. Research limitations/implications The study is based on some of the most recent findings to have a quick overview of the latest work carried out in this area. So far very few extensive review papers have been published to highlight the research work in the area of behavioral finance. This study will be helpful for new researches in this field and to identify the areas where possible work can be done. Practical implications Practical implication of the research is that companies, policymakers and issuers of securities can watch out of investors’ interest before issuing securities into the market. Social implications Under the Social Implication, investors can recognize several behavioral biases, take sound investment decisions and can also minimize their risk. Originality/value The essence of this paper is the identification of 17 types of biases and the literature related to them. The study is based on both, the literature on investment decisions and the biases in investment decision-making. Such study is less prevalent in the developing country like India. This paper does not only focus on the basic principles of behavioral finance but also explain some emerging concepts and theories of behavioral finance. Thus, the paper generates interest in the readers to find the solutions to minimize the effect of biases in decision-making.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the disposition effect that is exhibited by the investors through the review of research articles in the area of behavioral finance. When the investors are hesitant to realize the losses and quick to realize the gains, this phenomenon is known as the disposition effect. This paper explains various theories, which have been evolved over the years that has explained the phenomenon of disposition effect. It includes the behavior of individual investors, institutional investors and mutual fund managers. Design/methodology/approach The authors have used the existing literatures from the various authors, who have studied the disposition effect in either real market or the experimental market. This paper includes literature over a period of 40 years, that is, Dyl, 1977, in the form of tax loss selling, to the most recent paper, Surya et al. (2017). Some authors have used the PGR-PLR ratio for calculating the disposition effect in their study. However, some authors have used t-test, ANNOVA, Correlation coefficient, Standard deviation, Regression, etc., as a tool to find the presence of disposition effect. Findings The effect of disposition can be changed for different types of individual investors, institutional investors and mutual funds. The individual investors are largely prone to the disposition effect and the demographic variables like age, gender, experience, investor sophistication also impact the occurrence of the disposition effect. On the other side, the institutional investors and mutual funds managers may or may not be affected by the disposition effect. Practical implications The skilled understanding of the disposition effect will help the investors, financial institutions and policy-makers to reduce the adverse effect of this bias in the stock market. This paper contributes a detailed explanation of disposition effect and its impacts on the investors. The study of disposition effect has been found to be insufficient in the context of Indian capital market. Social implications The investors and society at large can gains insights about causes and influences of disposition effect which will be helpful to create sound investment decisions. Originality/value This paper has complied the 11 causes for the occurrence of disposition effect that are found by the different authors. The paper also highlights the impact of the disposition effect in the decision-making of various investors.