By Tyler Cowen

Public goods have two distinct aspects: nonexcludability and nonrivalrous consumption. “Nonexcludability” means that the cost of keeping nonpayers from enjoying the benefits of the good or service is prohibitive. If an entrepreneur stages a fireworks show, for example, people can watch the show from their windows o...

By Steven L. Jones and Jeffry M. Netter

The efficient markets theory (EMT) of financial economics states that the price of an asset reflects all relevant information that is available about the intrinsic value of the asset. Although the EMT applies to all types of financial securities, discussions of the theory usually focus on one kind of security, namely, ...

By Randall S. Kroszner

The governance of corporations encompasses a wide range of checks and balances that affect the monitoring and incentives of firms’ management. Sound corporate governance is particularly important when a firm’s managers are not the owners. Without appropriate corporate governance, nonowner managers might not work ve...

Anat Admati of Stanford's Graduate School of Business talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the financial crisis of 2008, the lessons she has learned, and how it has changed her view of economics, finance, and her career.

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Eugene Fama shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. The three received the prize for “for their empirical analysis of stock prices.” Fama has played a key role in the development of modern finance, with major contributions to a broad range of topics wit...

By Paul M. Romer

Compound Rates of Growth In the modern version of an old legend, an investment banker asks to be paid by placing one penny on the first square of a chessboard, two pennies on the second square, four on the third, etc. If the banker had asked that only the white squares be used, the initial penny would have doubled...

By Jeremy J. Siegel

The price of a share of stock, like that of any other financial asset, equals the present value of the sum of the expected dividends or other cash payments to the shareholders, where future payments are discounted by the interest rate and risks involved. Most of the cash payments to stockholders arise from dividends, w...