FINANCE APPLICATIONS OF GAME THEORY

FINANCE APPLICATIONS OF GAME THEORY
Franklin Allen and Stephen Morris *
Finance is concerned with how the savings of investors are allocated through financial markets and intermediaries to firms, which use them to fund their activities. Finance can be broadly divided into two fields. The first is asset pricing, which is concerned with the decisions of investors. The second is corporate finance, which is concerned with the decisions of firms. Traditional neoclassical economics did not attach much importance to either kind of finance. It was more concerned with the production, pricing and allocation of inputs and outputs and the operation of the markets for these. Models assumed certainty and in this context financial decisions are relatively straightforward. However, even with this simple methodology, important concepts such as the time value of money and discounting were developed. Finance developed as a field in its own right with the introduction of uncertainty into asset pricing