Abstract
Corporations create value. Financial intermediation in the United States represented just 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 1870, but this had risen to almost 9 percent of GDP by 2010.1 The addition of direct business investment brings this share to more than 18 percent of GDP, or about double the representation of finance markets in the size of the American economy. This mobilization of capital supported the rapid expansion of global trade over the period of the Industrial Revolution. But, the freezing of capital markets has plunged nations and the world into recessions and depressions on several different occasions, including the recent Global Financial Meltdown. Even the layperson now realizes that financial markets are essential for the smooth operation of the global economy. Yet, while most all this activity depends crucially on the correct valuation of the value corporations create, accurate models of corporate value have existed for only the last few generations.
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Notes
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, Publishers, 1776.
Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, New York: Hart, Schaffner, and Marx; Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1921.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, London and New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936.
Ronald H. Coase, “The Problem of Social Cost”, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 3, 1960, pp. 1–44.
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© 2015 Colin Read
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Read, C. (2015). Introduction. In: The Corporate Financiers. Great Minds in Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137341280_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137341280_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46505-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34128-0
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