Financial economics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Financial economics is the branch of economics concerned with resource allocation over time. It is further distinguished from other branches of economics by its "concentration on monetary activities", in which "money of one type or another is likely to appear on both sides of a trade" [1].

The questions addressed by the discipline are typically framed in terms of "time, uncertainty, options and information" [2].

  • Time: money now is traded for money in the future.
  • Uncertainty (or risk): The amount of money to be transferred in the future is uncertain.
  • options: one party to the transaction can make a decision at a later time that will affect subsequent transfers of money.
  • Information: knowledge of the future can reduce, or possibly eliminate, the uncertainty associated with future monetary value (FMV).

Contents

Given its scope, as above, financial economics tends to deal with the workings of financial markets, such as the stock market, and the financing of companies, and includes the following subject areas: Budgeting, saving, investing, borrowing, lending, insuring, hedging, diversifying, and asset management. Because the future is never known with certainty, a central concern of financial economics is the impact of uncertainty on resource allocation.

Financial economics thus attempts to answer questions such as:

  • How are the prices of financial assets determined (stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities)?
  • What are the effects of a company choosing different methods of financing its operations, such as issuing shares or borrowing?
  • What portfolio of assets should an investor hold in order to best meet his/her objectives?

Financial economics is based on several assumptions - chief amongst these, that financial decision makers are rational (see Homo economicus; Efficient market hypothesis). However, recently, researchers in Experimental economics and Experimental finance have challenged this assumption empirically. Further, these assumptions are challenged - theoretically - by Behavioral finance, a discipline primarily concerned with the rationality, or lack thereof, of economic agents.

Other common assumptions include market prices following a random walk, or asset returns being normally distributed. Empirical evidence suggests that these assumptions may not hold, and in practice, traders and analysts, and particularly risk managers, frequently modify the "standard models".

Theory

General

Institutions


General areas of finance
Financial markets • Investment management • Financial institutions • Personal finance • Public finance • Mathematical finance • Financial economics • Experimental finance • Computational finance
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