The field of finance covers the economics of claims on resources. For example, money is a claim on goods and services; stocks and bonds and futures contracts are all claims on money or on commodities.
Financial economists study the valuation of these claims, the markets in which they are traded, and their use by individuals, corporations, and the society at large.
At Stanford GSB, finance faculty and doctoral students study a wide spectrum of financial topics, including the pricing and valuation of assets, the behavior of financial markets, and the structure and financial decision-making of firms and financial intermediaries.
Investigation of issues arising in these areas is pursued both through the development of theoretical models and through the empirical testing of those models. The PhD Program is designed to give students a good understanding of the methods used in theoretical modeling and empirical testing.
