Old and new financial paradigms

Abstract

The finance industry has become an unmanageable clutter of all kinds of theories. At root, however, it still revolves around the assumption that the capital market works pretty well. The players in this capital market - financial investors and companies - concentrate their attention on commonplace financial contracts. They think in terms of securities and yields. They try to diversify their holdings and occasionally adapt their portfolios as and when situations change. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.