Financial Economics

The McFadden Act (1927 – 1994) was appealed by the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act. The Act made national banks competitive against state-chartered banks by letting national banks add more branches to the extent permitted by state law. The McFadden Act specifically prohibited interstate branching by allowing each…

The Federal Reserve or the Fed is the central bank of the United States of America. The Federal Reserve is a network of 12 regional Federal Reserve banks, but the Fed’s power center is in its New York bank. The Fed's Liabilities: Commercial banks’ reserves, government deposits, and mostly dollar bills The Fed Assets: Emergency discount loans…

Risk is the uncertainty of an asset’s return over a given period of time. Risk perception is the individual judgment people make about the severity of a risk and may varies from person to person. There are three types of people when it comes to risk: 1. Risk Averse They hate to lose more than they love to win. They try to avoid taking risks as…

In financial markets, people trade financial securities, commodities, and instruments at prices that reflect supply and demand. There are two types of Financial Markets - the primary market and the secondary market. All well developed financial markets have standardized financial instruments. Financial Instruments are assets (claim) for people…

The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is an application of ‘Rational Expectations Theory’ where people who enter the market, use all available & relevant information to make decisions. The only caveat is that information is costly and difficult to get. This Efficient Market Hypothesis implies that stock prices reflect all available and…

A bond is a type of financial instrument. Bonds are debt that firms and governments can issue to raise money and they earn interest. Characteristics of Bonds 1. Inverse Relationship There is an inverse relationship between the price of a bond and the market interest rate. Bonds have a resale (or secondary) market. A bond's secondary…