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Financial economics is the branch of economics characterized by a "concentration on monetary activities", in which "money of one type or another is likely to appear on both sides of a trade". Its concern is thus the interrelation of financial variables, such as share prices, interest rates and exchange rates, as opposed to those concerning the real economy. It has two main areas of focus: asset pricing and corporate finance; the first being the perspective of providers of capital, i.e. investors, and the second of users of capital. It thus provides the theoretical underpinning for much of finance. The subject is concerned with "the allocation and deployment of economic resources, both spatially and across time, in an uncertain environment". It therefore centers on decision making under uncertainty in the context of the financial markets, and the resultant economic and financial models and principles, and is concerned with deriving testable or policy implications from acceptable assumptions. It thus also includes a formal study of the financial markets themselves, especially market microstructure and market regulation. It is built on the foundations of microeconomics and decision theory. Financial econometrics is the branch of financial economics that uses econometric techniques to parameterise the relationships identified. Mathematical finance is related in that it will derive and extend the mathematical or numerical models suggested by financial economics. Whereas financial economics has a primarily microeconomic focus, monetary economics is primarily macroeconomic in nature. Underlying economics Financial economics studies how rational investors would apply decision theory to investment management. The subject is thus built on the foundations of microeconomics and derives several key results for the application of decision making under uncertainty to the financial markets. The underlying economic logic yields the fundamental theorem of asset pricing, which gives the conditions for arbitrage-free asset pricing. The aside formulae result directly. Present value, expectation and utility Underlying all of financial economics are the concepts of present value and expectation. Calculating their present value X s j / r {\displaystyle X_{sj}/r} allows the decision maker to aggregate the cashflows (or other returns) to be produced by the asset in the future to a single value at the date in question, and to thus more readily compare two opportunities; this concept is the starting point for financial decision making. (Note that here, " r {\displaystyle r} " represents a generic or arbitrary discount rate applied to the cash flows, whereas in the above, the risk-free rate is applied once these have been "adjusted" for their riskiness.) An immediate extension is to combine probabilities with present value, leading to the expected value criterion which sets asset value as a function of the sizes of the expected payouts and the probabilities of their occurrence, X s {\displaystyle X_{s}} and p s {\displaystyle p_{s}} respectively. This decision method, however, fails to consider risk aversion ("as any student of finance knows"). In other words, since individuals receive greater utility from an extra dollar when they are poor and less utility when comparatively rich, the approach is to therefore "adjust" the weight assigned to the various outcomes ("states") correspondingly, Y s {\displaystyle Y_{s}} . See indifference price. (Some investors may in fact be risk seeking as opposed to risk averse, but the same logic would apply). Choice under uncertainty here may then be characterized as the maximization of expected utility. More formally, the resulting expected utility hypothesis states that, if certain axioms are satisfied, the subjective value associated with a gamble by an individual is that individual's statistical expectation of the valuations of the outcomes of that gamble. The impetus for these ideas arise from various inconsistencies observed under the expected value framework, such as the St. Petersburg paradox and the Ellsberg paradox. Arbitrage-free pricing and equilibrium The concepts of arbitrage-free, "rational", pricing and equilibrium are then coupled with the above to derive "classical" (or "neo-classical") financial economics. Rational pricing is the assumption that asset prices (and hence asset pricing models) will reflect the arbitrage-free price of the asset, as any deviation from this price will be "arbitraged away". This assumption is useful in pricing fixed income securities, particularly bonds, and is fundamental to the pricing of derivative instruments. Economic equilibrium is, in general, a state in which economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced, and, in the absence of external influences these equilibrium values of economic variables will not change. General equilibrium deals with the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that a set of prices exists that will result in an overall equilibrium. (This is in contrast to partial equilibrium, which only analyzes single markets.) The two concepts are linked as follows: where market prices do not allow for profitable arbitrage, i.e. they comprise an arbitrage-free market, then these prices are also said to constitute an "arbitrage equilibrium". Intuitively, this may be seen by considering that where an arbitrage opportunity does exist, then prices can be expected to change, and are therefore not in equilibrium. An arbitrage equilibrium is thus a precondition for a general economic equilibrium. The immediate, and formal, extension of this idea, the fundamental theorem of asset pricing, shows that where markets are as described – and are additionally (implicitly and correspondingly) complete – one may then make financial decisions by constructing a risk neutral probability measure corresponding to the market. "Complete" here means that there is a price for every asset in every possible state of the world, s {\displaystyle s} , and that the complete set of possible bets on future states-of-the-world can therefore be constructed with existing assets (assuming no friction): essentially solving simultaneously for n (risk-neutral) probabilities, q s {\displaystyle q_{s}} , given n prices. For a simplif.... Discover the Andreas Loffler Lutz Kruschwitz popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Andreas Loffler Lutz Kruschwitz books.