Financing decisions lie at the heart of economic life. Whether a business expands, a household invests in education, or a community builds new infrastructure, the choice to commit scarce resources to one opportunity rather than another shapes the trajectory of individuals, firms, and entire economies. For decades, the dominant explanation for these choices was drawn from neoclassical economics: investors are rational, they have perfect information, and they maximize expected utility (Fama, 1970). In that world, financing decisions are a technical problem of calculating risk and return.

Yet anyone who has sat in a market in Bamenda, listened to investors discuss a new real estate project, or watched a young entrepreneur decide between a bank loan and family savings knows that the story is far more complicated. People do not decide in a vacuum. They decide under uncertainty, with limited information, under social pressure, with memories of past losses, and with hopes that cannot be captured in a spreadsheet (Simon, 1955). They are influenced by trust, by rumors, by the behavior of their neighbors, by religious convictions, by fear, and by pride.