Customer Reviews

Financial Theory and Corporate Policy (4th Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had this book for a PhD class in finance and have very few good words to say. The derivations should have been omitted: rarely is anything followed from the beginning to the end; the excerpts that are provided do not give much additional insight. Abundant typos in the formulas. In addition, the context of the models is often poorly presented and I was often left wondering what the situation or some assumptions are. Overall, relatively poorly written.
The book does give an overview of a lot of papers and as long as it is viewed as a starting point to read the papers it is acceptable. Still, the presentation is very fragmented and frustrating, creating a strong desire to read the original papers.

It took a while before this 4th edition came out. The 2nd and 3rd editions were pretty good, and the 4th ed still contains a lot of the old material. Clearly, this says something about finance theory - but it updates a lot of the empirical results and includes some new/relevant topics. I would have to agree that this book is probably a little shallow for the Ph.D. level, but most Ph.D. corporate finance courses probably would use papers rather than texts. Hence, that's where your actual derivations and the actual author's thought comes from. On the other hand, this book takes a very good approach and the authors are very respected in the field. In terms of a more advanced MBA text, I think that this is the best book available.

A perfect book to acquaint students with basic principles of finance theory emphasizing the theory of the firm's investment and financing decisions. To accomplish this goal, this textbook focus on basic concepts of decision making under risk, market efficiency, asset pricing, capital structure and dividend policy. This book is definitely for both a master and PhD levels. I used it in MBA Finance, and it did the trick. Please notice this book has a solution manual sold separately.

This is considered poor quality even in a 3rd world country! Several pages are badly copied and misplaced in a manner that parts of the text have droped out of the page! The pages have little margin, and are low quality black and white copies of an original. It looks so cheap. The book has lots and lots of typos, the worse part is, most of them are in formulas and mathematical areas where precision is of key importance to ones ability to comprehend. Overally, I'm dissatissfied, might say dissapointed. $180? For this piece of low quality copy offset mess?

I have worked now with the old version of this book for several years. Not because it is up to date, not because it contains rigorous proofs for every single element ever covered in finance, but because it contains a good summary of nearly everything that matters for this industry.

I am still astonished how comprehensive and still sufficiently advanced the topics have been already in the old version of this real classic. This is and will remain one of my favourite books. Thx for the updated version.

The book suggests it serves as a first course in finance for PhD students, and a second course in finance for master students. But as I see it, it is too shallow for PhD level reading, as it never explain some complicated derivation clear enough. You don't know how some statements or conclusions come from. There is just not enough explanation. I mean, the author could have said that "after some derivations" or "it can be shown that...", but they just give some results without mentioning whether it can be derived with some convoluted math but because it is out of the depth of the book, only the result is given, or it just comes easily from the assumptions or conditons. I have to figure their logic since usually I just like to thought about how to derive a result as I am supposed to read it as a first book in finance for a PhD student. Many times I have to give up figuring, as the steps the authors take from the conditions to the results are usually too big to guess. So I ended up with treat this book as an ElEMENTARY level book, giving up any derivation and analyzing, just taking the results as granted.
According to my roommate who is a master in finance student and who happened to look at my book for curiosity, this book looks too deep for a master level in some topics, e.g., real options. They try to talk about some complicated financial theories, not deep and clean enough for a PhD student and also not that intuitive to understand for a master student.
In sum, I would say, don't waste money and time on this book. If you are a PhD student, read some books or papers treating certain topics with clear derivations and depth. If you are a master student, though my opinion is sort of partial, the book does not provide good intution for some advanced topics.

I have to go through this because it is a required professional exam textbook.
There are many things need to improved:

1, English language please. For example page 420.
2, Numbers do not match at several places. Again page 420.
3, Redendent logics, for example formula 9.2.
4, And why a bad example always a "he" and good example always "she"??? Sexual discrimination???

I expect 4th edition book not this bad. Maybe it is rushed to publish. "Price Theory" is a good book for example if people wonder.

The book is not hardcover, it is not in the best conditions and it is the international version, which I hope it is not going to be a problem during the semester. That is not how the product is described.