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Intermediate Financial Theory

  • 4th Edition - September 29, 2025
  • Latest edition
  • Authors: Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson, Samuel Danthine
  • Language: English

Intermediate Financial Theory, Fourth Edition provides an updated and thorough explanation of basic financial concepts, in a manner accessible both to those new to the subject an… Read more

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Description

Intermediate Financial Theory, Fourth Edition provides an updated and thorough explanation of basic financial concepts, in a manner accessible both to those new to the subject and to those without a deep background in advanced mathematics. It is ideal for students with a background in Economics who are looking for an accessible yet rigorous introduction to financial theory beyond basic MBA-level textbooks. While not as dense as highly technical Ph.D. presentations tend to be, this valuable text seeks rather to integrate academic expertise with real-world experience from leading experts in the field. The fourth edition has been fully updated and is supplemented by extensive online resources.

Key features

  • Completely updated edition of a classic textbook that fills a gap between MBA- and PhD-level texts.
  • Focuses on clear explanations of key concepts and requires limited mathematical prerequisites.
  • Emphasizes the distinction between the equilibrium and the arbitrage perspectives on valuation and pricing.
  • The 4th edition includes new chapters focused on the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the sustainability challenge, the safe asset shortage, discounting from a long run (climate change) perspective. It also collects, in a new separate chapter, relevant insights from a corporate finance perspective.
  • Online solutions manual available for qualified instructors

Readership

Graduate students in Finance, Business, and Economics

Table of contents

Part One: Introduction

1. On the Role of Financial Markets and Institutions
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

2. Finance in the 21st Century: Crisis and Sustainability
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

3. The Challenges of Asset Pricing: A Road Map
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

Part Two: The Demand for Financial Assets

4. Making Choices in Risky Situations
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

5. Measuring Risk and Risk Aversion
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

6. Risk Aversion and Investment Decisions, Part I: Subtitle?
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

7. Risk Aversion and Investment Decisions, Part II: Modern Portfolio Theory
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

8. Risk Aversion and Investment Decisions, Part III: Challenges to Implementation
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

Part 3: Equilibrium Pricing

9. The Capital Asset Pricing Model
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

10. Arrow–Debreu Pricing, Part I
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

11. The Consumption Asset Pricing Model, Part I
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

12. The Consumption Asset Pricing Model, Part II.
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

Part 4: Arbitrage Pricing

13. Arrow–Debreu Pricing, Part II
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

14. The Martingale Measure, Part I
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

15. The Martingale Measure, Part II
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

16. The Arbitrage Pricing Theory
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

Part 5: Topics

17. Safe Asset Shortage
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

18. Portfolio Management in the Long Run
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

19. Discounting, the Dice Model as a CAPM
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

20. Sustainable Finance
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

21. Selected Topics in Corporate Finance
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

22. Financial Equilibrium with Di_erential Information
Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson and Samuel Danthine

Web Chapters include:


Web chapter 1 supplements to Chapter 1: The Solow Growth Model
Web chapter 2 supplements to Chapter 2: The European Financial Crisis
Web chapter 4 supplements to Chapter 4: Advanced Topics on Preferences
Web chapter 5 supplements to Chapter 5: Excessive Risk Taking and Under Risk Taking and Rabin’s argument
Web chapter 7 supplements to Chapter 7: More on the Demand for Assets and Ambiguity
Web chapter 8 supplements to Chapter 8: On Mean Reversion
Web chapter 11 supplements to Chapter 11: Proof of Theorem 11.2, Corollary 11.1, and More on Aggregation
Web chapter 12 supplements to Chapter 12: Complements on Bayesian Updating
Web chapter 13 supplements to Chapter 13: Option Theory: A Refresher
Web chapter 15 supplements to Chapter 15: An Intuitive Overview of Continuous Time Finance
Web chapter 16 supplements to Chapter 16: Total Factor Productivity Risk
Web chapter 17 supplements to Chapter 17: CCAPM and Bond Holding
Web chapter 18 supplements to Chapter 18: More on Variations on the Risk-Free Rate
Web chapter 19 supplements to Chapter 19: More on Weitzman and DICE
Web chapter 21 supplements to Chapter 21: Zero Net Present Value Investment

Product details

  • Edition: 4
  • Latest edition
  • Published: November 20, 2025
  • Language: English

About the authors

JD

Jean-Pierre Danthine

Jean-Pierre Danthine is Honorary Director of the Enterprise for Society Center (E4S), a center affiliated to UNIL-HEC, IMD and EPFL, of which he was Managing Director from its foundation in December 2019 until 30 April 2023. He is a Distinguished Research scholar at IMD and an honorary professor at the University of Lausanne and the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne). From 2015 to 2021 he was President of the Paris School of Economics. From 2010 to 2015 he was a member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, of which he was Vice-Chairman from 2012. He was Managing Director of the Swiss Finance Institute from its foundation in 2006 until the end of 2009. Professor Danthine previously taught at Columbia University and held visiting appointments at CUNY Graduate Center, University of Southern California (Los Angeles), Université d'Aix-Marseille, Université Laval (Québec), as well as Universities of Toulon and Dijon. His publications have appeared in Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Finance and other leading international journals.

Affiliations and expertise
Enterprise for Society Center, UniL-IMD- EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

JD

John B. Donaldson

John B. Donaldson holds the Mario J. Gabelli Professorship in Finance at Columbia Business School. For many years he taught courses both in corporate finance and options. More recently his teaching has been devoted to macroeconomics. His research focuses on the influence of business cycle phenomena on the pricing of financial assets, with a particular emphasis on the impact of the real side of the economy. Most recently he has studied the possible financial implications of a more stakeholder oriented economy. His work has appeared in numerous professional journals, including the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, Quantitative Analysis, and the Journal of Monetary Economics.

Affiliations and expertise
Mario J. Gabelli Professor of Finance at Columbia University Business School, New York, NY, USA

SD

Samuel Danthine

Samuel Danthine is currently associate professor in Economics at École Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Analyse de l’Information (Université de Rennes - ENSAI), where he is also Head of the Risk Management and Financial Engineering and the Economic Modelling and Health Economics master programs. He has previously taught at the Université du Québec à Montréal, and held visiting appointments at HEC Lausanne, the Universidad de Málaga, departamento de Teoria e Historia Economica, the Université de Sherbrooke, and Concordia University.

Affiliations and expertise
ENSAI, France

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