Theoretical Foundations of Corporate Finance

Coroporate finance is the area of finance that studies the determinants of firms’ values, including capital structure, financing, and investment decisions. Although there are several excellent texts in corporate finance, this one focuses on the theoretical foundations of the subject in a consistent and integrated way at the PHD level. In addition to a textbook for advanced graduate students, it can aslso serve as a general reference to researchers and sophisticated practitioners. The material presented is carefully selected with an eye to what is essential to understanding the underlying theory, ensuring that this text should remain useful for years to come. The book is divided into three parts. The first section presents the basic principles of valuation based on the absence of arbitrage, including a discussion of the determinants of the optimal capital structure based on the seminal results of Modigliani and Miller. The second section discusses the implications of agency problems and information asymmetries to capital structure, giving particular attention to payout policy and to debt contract design.
The concluding portion presents different ways of restructuring capital, includ

Author Biography

Joo Amaro de Matos is Director of the Undergraduate Business Program in the School of Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. His teaching includes MBA and Ph.D. courses in Europe and Brazil, and he holds Ph.D.s in both Management and Physics.