The author presents a self-contained exposition of selected topics in the theory of financial markets with applications to corporate finance. The book covers only topics sanctioned by tradition. About one-quarter of the book is devoted to the one-period model with certainty. Half the book deals with the one-period model with uncertainty, and the remaining quarter with multiperiod models with uncertainty, both discrete and continuous. The one-period model with certainty starts with topics from the standard theory of the consumer and discusses consumer preferences and their representation by utility functions. The author then defines arbitrage trading strategies and uses the assumed properties of preferences to show that equilibrium in this model excludes arbitrage trading strategies. In the absence of arbitrage trading strategies all securities earn the same rate of return. The price functional, which maps terminal cash flows into initial prices, is additive, and the irrelevance of corporate financial structure and dividend policy follows from the additivity of the price functional.

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the market for financial assets in a production and exchange economy with several realized outputs and a single unobservable source of nondiversifiable risk. The paper demonstrates that, for a large class of diffusion outputs and preferences, optimizing consumers first estimate the realizations of the unobservable factor and then use these estimates to determine portfolio and consumption rules. Moreover, the explicit consideration of this unobservable productivity factor affects equilibrium demands and prices. The equilibrium spot rate of interest emerges as the “best estimate” of the unobservable factor, and multiperiod default‐free bonds arise as the optimal hedge for the unobservable changes of the stochastic investment opportunity set.

This paper analyzes the market for financial assets in a production and exchange economy with several realized outputs and a single unobservable source of nondiversifiable risk. The paper demonstrates that, for a large class of diffusion outputs and preferences, optimizing consumers first estimate the realizations of the unobservable factor and then use these estimates to determine portfolio and consumption rules. Moreover, the explicit consideration of this unobservable productivity factor affects equilibrium demands and prices. The equilibrium spot rate of interest emerges as the “best estimate” of the unobservable factor, and multiperiod default-free bonds arise as the optimal hedge for the unobservable changes of the stochastic investment opportunity set.