Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, which is the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services . Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.
A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks, which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include securities listed on a public stock exchange, as well as stock that is only traded privately, such as shares of private companies which are sold to investors through equity crowdfunding platforms. Investment is usually made with an investment strategy in mind.
A stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation.
The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information.
Eugene Francis "Gene" Fama is an American economist, best known for his empirical work on portfolio theory, asset pricing, and the efficient-market hypothesis.
Market timing is the strategy of making buying or selling decisions of financial assets by attempting to predict future market price movements. The prediction may be based on an outlook of market or economic conditions resulting from technical or fundamental analysis. This is an investment strategy based on the outlook for an aggregate market rather than for a particular financial asset.
Robert Ward Vishny is an American economist and is the Myron S. Scholes Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Michael Cole "Mike" Jensen is an American economist who works in the area of financial economics. Between 2000 and 2009 he worked for the Monitor Company Group, a strategy-consulting firm which became "Monitor Deloitte" in 2013. He holds the position of Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard University.
Marina von Neumann Whitman is an American economist, writer and former automobile executive. She is a professor of business administration and public policy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business as well as The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
Ted London is an American scholar and teacher on Base of the Pyramid (BoP) business strategies. He is the Ford Motor Company Clinical Professor of Business Administration at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. London is an internationally recognized expert on the intersection of business strategy and poverty alleviation. In 2016 London authored The Base of the Pyramid Promise: Building Businesses with Impact and Scale, which translates over 25 years of research and experience into actionable strategies, frameworks, and tools for managers seeking inclusive growth. The book won the Responsible Research in Management Award in 2018 and the Humanistic Management Book Award in 2019.
Robert James Shiller is an American economist, academic, and author. As of 2022, he served as a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a fellow at the Yale School of Management's International Center for Finance. Shiller has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) since 1980, was vice president of the American Economic Association in 2005, its president-elect for 2016, and president of the Eastern Economic Association for 2006–2007. He is also the co‑founder and chief economist of the investment management firm MacroMarkets LLC.
Alexander Ljungqvist is a Swedish economist, educator, scholar, writer, and speaker. He is a professor of finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, where he is the inaugural holder of the Stefan Persson Family Chair in Entrepreneurial Finance. His areas of expertise include corporate finance, investment banking, initial public offerings, entrepreneurial finance, private equity, venture capital, corporate governance, and asset pricing. Professor Ljungqvist teaches MBA and executive courses in private equity and venture capital and a PhD course in corporate finance.
Xavier Gabaix is a French economist, currently the Pershing Square Professor of Economics and Finance at Harvard University. He has been listed among the top 8 young economists in the world by The Economist. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, as well as a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
The Stephen M. Ross School of Business, also known as Michigan Ross, is the business school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1924, the school is ranked among the best business schools in the world by The Economist, Financial Times, QS World University Rankings, U.S. News & World Report, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Wayne E. Baker is an American author and sociologist on the senior faculty of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. His teaching and research interests are in the fields of values, American society, social capital, social networks and economic sociology. Baker is best known both for his research in economic sociology, where he demonstrated that financial markets operate as social networks, and his survey research on values, where he documented Americans’ core values. His data show Americans share more core values than news media and political campaigns will admit. These core values include patriotism, belief in God, individualism, success, equal opportunities, freedom and liberty, respect and the free market. He writes in both academic and popular media on this theme and is often invited to present his findings across the U.S
The University of Michigan Social Venture Fund is the first student-run social venture fund in the United States. Established in 2009 by four Ross School of Business MBA students, the Social Venture Fund invests in innovative and mission-driven social enterprises. The SVF is overseen by Professor Gautam Kaul and housed in the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan.
Avanidhar Subrahmanyam is a professor and named chair at the University of California Los Angeles. He is an expert in stock market activity and behavioral finance, and has published a number of papers on financial markets.
Robin Greenwood is an American economist, and both the George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking and the Anne and James F. Rothenberg Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School. He was formerly head of the school's finance unit, and chair of the Behavioral Finance and Financial Stability project. He also served on the Financial Advisory Roundtable of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Henrik Cronqvist is the Robert J. and Carolyn A. Waltos Dean and Professor of Economics of the George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University in Orange, California, a position he has held since August 2022. He previously served as a professor of finance, Bank of America scholar, and vice dean for faculty and research at the University of Miami School of Business, where he conducted interdisciplinary research and taught finance and management courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
Alex Edmans is professor of finance at London Business School and the current Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College. Since 2017 he has been the Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe. He gave the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World, on confirmation bias and the importance of being discerning with evidence. In 2021 he was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants.
