A History of Corporate Finance

Rating:
Summary: Strictly for Academic Libraries
Review: This book is jargon-laden, lifeless, and filled with undefined terms from corporate law and finance. It covers a vast historical landscape, from the Medicis to LBOs (with an appendix on the classical world). However, it doesn't handle the voluminous material by picking out key movements and themes. Instead, it repeatedly compresses complex institutional and financial developments into a few paragraphs of leaden prose, to squeeze in as much material as possible. Time and again I found myself reading and rereading a paragraph and wondering what it meant. Corporate finance students might have better luck with the book but I doubt that even they would enjoy it. In fairness, the book is refreshingly skeptical about academic finance theories, and it does draw together material that might otherwise be hidden away in technical books and journals -- but that's not a reason why laymen should try to read it. They would be better off reading much better-written books by Charles Kindleberger or John Kenneth Galbraith.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: This thorough, scholarly study balances broad concepts with specific details of the history of finance from the 15th through 20th centuries. Though authors Jonathan Barron Baskin and Paul J. Miranti Jr. assume that the reader has some knowledge of finance and relevant terms, they avoid mathematical models and jargon in favor of plain language. Their book is accessible and valuable to lay readers as well as trained economists, historians, students of finance and anyone coping with an emerging market. The issues they examine remain surprisingly relevant, because - as they soon make clear - the problems that historical markets once confronted are the same issues of risk and information that markets face today, particularly emerging markets. As a historical study, this book presents no particular prescriptions for success or future action. However, we at getAbstract.com recommend its explanation of why some structures succeeded and others failed, because those forces have clear implications today.