Foundations for Financial Economics

Book excerpt: Based on formal derivations of financial theory, this volume provides a rigorous exploration of individual's consumption and portfolio decisions under uncertainty. Features in-depth coverage of such topics as: concepts of risk aversion and stochastic dominance; mathematical properties of a portfolio frontier; distributional conditions for mutual fund separation; capital asset pricing models and arbitrage pricing models; general pricing rules for securities that pay off in more than one state of nature; the pricing of options; rational expectation models of risky asset prices; signaling models; how multiperiod dynamic economies can be modeled; a multiperiod economy with emphasis on valuation by arbitrage; econometric issues associated with testing capital asset pricing models.