Theory of Financial Decision Making

Rating:
Summary: The Best Text on Financial Economics
Review: Ingersoll has done an exceptional job of presenting the theory of financial economics, from risk and stochastic dominance to dynamic portfolio optimization and continuous-time finance. The mathematics is clear and concise. The economic intuition shines through.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Text on Financial Economics
Review: Ingersoll has done an exceptional job of presenting the theory of financial economics, from risk and stochastic dominance to dynamic portfolio optimization and continuous-time finance. The mathematics is clear and concise. The economic intuition shines through.

Rating:
Summary: A Revision, Please!
Review: The books presents traditional finance economics. It is a very good and a classical book. But it is not easy to read because of its terrible, old-fashioned notation and writing.

It is plenty of examples and gives a very good intuition. So I'd say it is good because it teaches traditional finance since the beginning in a way one can understand finance and the underlying math.

Clearly, the book needs a revision to put it into the modern language of financial economics as well as to add the results (and models) that have been published in papers in the last 20 years.

As I said, without a revision, reading the book is not enough to allow one to understand modern papers published in the field. As a result, after reading it you will not be able to say you know finance. But without knowing what the book is about, you will not be also able to say you know finance. Of course you can consult other sources, but even with the terrible notation, it is a pleasure to read, for instance, chapter 2 (Arbitrage), chapter 4 (mean-variance portfolio analysis) or chapter 11 (discrete-time intertemporal portfolio selection).

Rating:
Summary: Outdated and Unclear
Review: This book is possibly the worst textbook I have ever read. The notation is unwieldy, the explanations are unclear and there is very little to help your intuition. This, by the way, is not because of the mathematical or technical content which goes no deeper than introductory stochastic calculus and control. Even if it were a good text, however, it would urgently need revising. The material is rooted firmly in the 70's and 80's with almost no emphasis whatsover on the martinagle represntation of asset prices.