General Equilibrium Foundations Of Finance

The purpose of this book is to give a sound economic foundation of finance. Finance is a coherent branch of applied economics that is designed to understand financial markets in order to give advice for practical financial decisions. This book argues that for a sound economic foundation of finance the famous general equilibrium model which in its modern form emphasizes the incompleteness of financial markets is well suited. The aim of the book is to demonstrate that financial markets can be meaningfully embedded into a more general system of markets including, for example, commodity markets. The interaction of these markets can be described via the well known notion of a competitive equilibrium. We argue that for a sound foundation this competitive equilibrium should be unique. In a first step we demonstrate that this essential goal cannot of be achieved based only on the rationality principle, i. e. on the assumption utility maximization of some utility function subject to the budget constraint. In particular we show that this important lack of structure is disturbing as well for the case of mean-variance utility functions which are the basis of the Capital Asset Pricing Model, one of the cornerstones of finance. The final goal of our book is to give reasonable restrictions on the agents' utility functions which lead to a well determined financial markets model.

A presentation of classical asset pricing theory, this textbook is the only one to address the economic foundations of financial markets theory from a mathematically rigorous standpoint and to offer a self-contained critical discussion based on empirical results. Tools for understanding the economic analysis are provided, and mathematical models are presented in discrete time/finite state space for simplicity. Examples and exercises included.

'This book makes compelling reading for anyone interested in exploring the foundations of monetary theory from a rigorous general equilibrium perspective.' – Gabriele Camera, Purdue University, US 'Introducing the Arrow-Debreu-Starr model of monetary general equilibrium, Professor Starr provides the best defense ever made for the relevance of the Walrasian model to the pure theory of money. While most monetary theorists ventured to the overlapping generations model and then to the search model, only to create recently a hybrid search-Walrasian model, Starr presents the culmination of a patient, career-long effort to integrate money into the basic Walrasian model, with realistic taxation critically helping the government's money to dominate.' – Dror Goldberg, Bar Ilan University, Israel The microeconomic foundation of the theory of money has long represented a puzzle to economic theory. Why is there Money? derives the foundations of monetary theory from advanced price theory in a mathematically precise family of trading post models. It has long been recognized that the fundamental theoretical analysis of a market economy is embodied in the Arrow-Debreu-Walras mathematical general equilibrium model, with one great deficiency: the analysis cannot accommodate money and financial institutions. In this groundbreaking book, Ross M. Starr addresses this problem directly, by expanding the Arrow-Debreu model to include a multiplicity of trading opportunities, with the resultant endogenous derivation of money as the carrier of value among them. This fundamental breakthrough is achieved while maintaining the Walrasian general equilibrium price-theoretic structure, augmented primarily by the introduction of separate bid and ask prices reflecting transaction costs. The result is foundations of monetary theory consistent with and derived from modern price theory. This fascinating book will provide a stimulating and thought-provoking read for academics and postgraduate students focusing on economics, macroeconomics, macroeconomic policy and finance, money and banking. Central bankers will also find much to interest them within this book.

The economic theory of general equilibrium underpins the most important models used in economic theory in general and in its more specialized areas such as macroeconomics, international trade, environmental economics, growth theory, and developmental economics. In Foundations of the Theory of General Equilibrium, leading academic scholar, Yves Balasko offers a good introduction to the economic theory of general equilibrium and makes use of various mathematical tools as intuitive and easy as possible. The second half of the book addresses properties of the general equilibrium model that are still at the frontier of current research. These properties deal with the characterization of economies with a unique equilibrium and, more generally, with the relationships between the number of equilibria and the fundamentals of an economy. Contents:The Exchange ModelA Simple Linear Version of the Exchange ModelThe Exchange Model with Two Goods and Two ConsumersConsumer TheoryThe Equilibrium ManifoldThe Natural ProjectionEquilibrium Analysis for Fixed Total ResourcesThe Natural Projection and Envelope TheoryA Duality TheorySeveral Extensions of the General Equilibrium Model Readership: Graduate students in mathematics who want to specialize in economics and mathematical economics; researchers and professionals who will find in this book a detailed account of some of the most current developments of a difficult but essential theory.

General Equilibrium Models of Monetary Economies: Studies in the Static Foundations of Monetary Theory is a collection of essays that addresses the integration of the theory of money and the theory of value by using a mathematical general equilibrium theory. The papers discuss monetary theory, microeconomic theory, bilateral trade, transactions costs, intertemporal allocation, and the value of money. The Arrow-Debreu model of Walrasian general equilibrium theory provides a framework to represent money as a device for facilitating trade among economic agents without the use of money as a medium of exchange and as a store of value. The essays analyze the rationale for using a medium of exchange, for using a store of value, and for holding of idle balances in equilibrium. The essays show that by explicit modeling of the structure and difficulties of trade, a powerful class of models which deny money and finance a role in the economy, has by itself shown to have provided the foundation for the structures of trade. The collection will prove helpful for economists, statistician, mathematicians, students or professors of economics and business.

Financial Markets and the Real Economy reviews the current academic literature on the macroeconomics of finance.

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. For readers interested in a rigorous overview of financial economicsn individual consumption point of view. © 1988