Theory And Reality In Financial Economics: Essays Toward A New Political Finance

Essays Toward a New Political Finance

George M Frankfurter

• Publisher: World Scientific
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9789812707918, 9789812707918
• eBook ISBN: 9789812770004
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Science générale

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Prologue
• 1. Method and Methodology The methodology of modern finance. How and why it muddles the distinction between method (its technique), and its methodology (its internal logic and the boundaries of its research program).
• 2. What is All Efficiency? This is the story of what market efficiency really means — an abstract construct that is very unlikely “out there.” Nevertheless, it is on the minds of those who would like to see it to be out there.
• 3. Still Autistic Finance The new wave economics, called by the founders of its public movement “Post-Autistic Economics,” and how and why this movement has not secured a foothold in financial economics.
• 4. The Young Finance Faculty’s Guide to Publishing: Inspired By and After (Rather Loosely) Benjamin Britten The story of the publishing process in academe, more specifically in finance. The essay mulls over how editors and editorial boards of journals keep out material that does not fit the ideology, thereby making it sure that a scientific revolution is not too likely to happen. It also shows the connection between one’s career and the process of discovery.
• 5. Prolific Authors in Finance An analysis of what 50 years of financial publishing achieved in volume without answering the truly important questions of the field.
• 6. For-Profit Education: An Idea That Should be Put to Rest? A discussion of the fallacies and pitfalls of institution of higher education as for-profit enterprises. Differences between market goods and services and social goods and services are also discussed.
• 7. Weep Not for Microsoft: Monopoly’s Fatal Exception This is about the monopoly lawsuit against Microsoft, and how politics supports a monopolist with an inferior product.
• 8. The Socio-Economics of Scandals The first of the Enron papers in which the culpability of the accounting firm is examined. I also discuss the markedly different reaction of the market to downsizing, and the illegal dealings of corporate giants. This difference is interesting, because in either case, the event is massive layoffs of the firm’s workforce.
• 9. Desperately Seeking Toto The Enron fiasco shed light on a third group of people (side-by-side with Enron’s executives and accountants). These were people who paved the way for Enron, politically and otherwise, who were handsomely compensated for their effort without taking any risks. I call this the Enron encounter of the third kind. The existence of such persons is available not in an efficient market, but in a Lyman Frank Baum’s world of Oz. That is why we should seek Toto — to show that behind the curtain there is only the smoke and mirrors of politics.
• 10. And Now for Something Entirely Different I look at the attempt of saving Andersen from its well-deserved, ultimate demise as a religious act.
• 11. After the Ball The Enron debacle opened a Pandora’s box of corporate evildoing. This paper is about the follow-up scandals, moldering fires, in the wake of the Enron case.
• 12. Capitalism or Industrial Fiefdom In this essay I take issue with an earlier monograph/collection of work by Milton Friedman, in which Friedman argued that capitalism is the only social structure in which the individual can be truly free. In contrast I argue that in the Anglo-American strain of capitalism, individuals gradually give up their freedom because of the grossly skewed distribution of wealth.
• 13. The Theory of Fair Markets (TFM): Toward a New Finance Paradigm A recap of the old paradigm that evolved from the neoclassical thought contagion, and a suggestion of new ways of academic finance research.
• Epilogue A summary of the book, and some cogitation where financial economics might take us in the future.
• Afterword: Encomium for an Ideologue On the occasion of Professor Milton M. Friedman’s passing away.
• Author Index
• Subject Index