"Entertaining and informative. Desai takes us on a journey through the fundamentals of finance, from asset pricing to risk and risk management, via options, mergers, debt, and bankruptcy."- John Lanchester, The New Yorker "A fascinating new perspective on modern finance," -- Oliver Hart, 2016 Nobel Laureate in Economics "Lucid, witty and delightfully erudite... From the French revolution to film noir, from the history of probability to Jane Austen and The Simpsons, this is an astonishing intellectual feast." -- Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan Longlisted for 2017 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year A 2017 AMAZON PICK IN BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP A WealthManagement.com BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF 2017 In 1688, essayist Josef de la Vega described finance as both "the fairest and most deceitful business... the noblest and the most infamous in the world, the finest and most vulgar on earth." The characterization of finance as deceitful, infamous, and vulgar still rings true today - particularly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This insightful business book asks: what happened to the fairest, noblest, and finest profession that de la Vega saw? De la Vega hit on an essential truth that has been forgotten: finance can be just as principled, life-affirming, and worthy as it can be fraught with questionable practices. This is the core of humanizing finance. Today, the field is shrouded in mystery for outsiders, while many insiders are uneasy with the disrepute of their profession. How can finance become more accessible and also recover its nobility? Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai, in his "last lecture" to the graduating Harvard MBA class of 2015, took up the cause of restoring humanity to finance. With incisive wit and irony, his lecture provided an accessible guide to finance by drawing upon a rich knowledge of literature, film, history, and philosophy to explain the inner workings of the field in a manner that has never been seen before. This book captures Desai's lucid exploration of the ideas of finance as seen through the unusual prism of the humanities. Through this novel, creative approach, Desai shows that outsiders can access the underlying ideas of value creation easily and insiders can reacquaint themselves with the core humanity of their profession. The mix of finance and the humanities creates unusual pairings: Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope are guides to risk management; Jeff Koons becomes an advocate of leverage; and Mel Brooks's The Producers teaches us about fiduciary responsibility. In Desai's vision, the principles of finance also provide answers to critical questions in our lives. Among many surprising parallels, bankruptcy teaches us how to react to failure, the lessons of mergers apply to marriages, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model demonstrates the true value of relationships. THE WISDOM OF FINANCE is a wholly unique book, offering a refreshing new perspective on one of the world's most complex and misunderstood professions at the intersection of economics and the humanities. How can stories from literature and film illuminate the core principles of modern finance? Insurance and Risk: How Jane Austen and the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce provide masterful lessons in managing life's uncertainty. The Power of Debt: Why artist Jeff Koons and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice are the perfect guides to understanding the commitments and opportunities of leverage. Valuation: What the parable of the talents and John Milton teach us about the financial logic of value and how to measure what truly matters for the future. The Principal-Agent Problem: How Mel Brooks's The Producers offers a hilarious, and surprisingly accurate, lesson in fiduciary responsibility. Corporate Finance: Why the lessons from corporate mergers apply to marriages, and how the study of bankruptcy can teach us to fail forward.

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• Publication Date: May 23, 2017
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 241 Pages
• File Size: 72 KB