Real options are valuable sources of flexibility that are either inherent in, or can be built into, corporate assets. The value of such options are generally not captured by the standard discounted cash flow (DCF) approach, but can be estimated using a variant of financial option pricing...

In these "extracts" from the world's best-selling graduate textbook, the authors offer a number of suggestions for practitioners, including: Copyright (c) 2008 Morgan Stanley.

As a result of the Asian crisis, relationship-based economic systems are now under attack for corruption and inefficiency. Yet, until recently, they were held up as an alternative (and in some respects superior) form of capitalism to the arm's-length, market-based, Anglo-Saxon systems of the...

Capitalism-or, more precisely, the free enterprise system-is the most effective system for allocating resources and rewards. For this reason, most economists tend to believe that capitalism is bound to spread from the U.S. to all parts of the world. But the authors argue that the triumph of...

According to some observers, the commercial bank-an institution that conducts the twin activities of accepting deposits payable on demand and originating loans-has outlived its usefulness and is in a state of terminal decline. The broad statistical evidence for this contention, however, is...