Optimism bias is a well-established illusion of being over- optimistic about future events. The basic idea is that when people judge their chances of experiencing a good outcome they estimate their odds to be above average. But when they contemplate the probability that something unpleasant will happen to them, they estimate their odds to be lower than those of other people. A great number of academic studies have been done on this subject. Some of the well established cases of optimism bias are as follows:
Optimism bias is also quite common in the Real Estate Markets
In the last 4-5 years, the real estate investment community seems to have been a victim of optimism bias. This is most exemplified in the severe under estimation of time/duration required for construction/operation of project investments. For fund managers who have made investments in major parts of Asia (China, Vietnam, India, Indonesia) in the last 4-5 years, under estimation of timelines is the one area in which they all concede to have erred. The experience has shown how easy it is to fall into the optimism bias trap and start believing that once the finance is secured and the contracts awarded, things just roll on in an automode. Following are some of interesting reasons (these are all true) by which projects have gone significantly delayed:
There is no way a fund manager investing in projects could have foreseen such situations; and such situations sometimes do have an impact on the IRRs. But the harsh reality is that such unique events do happen with regular regularity. Therefore, in every investment, an investor has to incorporate for the unknown event that could have an unknown impact, against his optimism bias!
It is believed that the only section of the population that isn’t susceptible to the optimism bias are people with major depressive disorder. Probably funds should consider hiring some of them.
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