Research
Daniel Walters serves as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at INSEAD and holds both a PhD and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Before entering academia, Daniel had a career in investment banking and investment management, where he managed a portfolio worth $200 million at a value-oriented, long/short equity hedge fund.
Daniel's research aims to enhance consumer judgment and decision-making. Specifically, he focuses on how people draw inferences from missing information when making product choices, investment decisions, and intertemporal judgments. His work delves into the impact of overconfidence stemming from neglected evidence, memory biases, and how beliefs about unknown information affect investment behaviors like diversification, trading frequency, and the willingness to seek financial advice. He employs a mix of theoretical models, lab experiments with real incentives, field studies, and large-scale data sets to validate his research.
Daniel has published his findings in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, PNAS, and Psychological Review. He has also presented his research at notable conferences such as the Association for Consumer Research, Society for Consumer Psychology, Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference, and the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.
Daniel's teaching has focused on both MBA and Ph.D. students, where where he redesigned an existing elective called “Market Driving Strategies.” This course teaches various elements of marketing strategy to students, with a focus on improving managerial judgment and decision-making. In this course he has receiving an average rating of 4.4 out of 5. Additionally he has taught Consumer Decision Making, a required course for all Ph.D. students in the marketing area.