The Nobel Prize was given to Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes for discovering a new method for determining the value of an option. This is known as the Black-Merton-Scholes option pricing formula. The purpose of this essay is to explain why the Black-Merton-Scholes option pricing formula is...

Many observers have argued that credit default swaps contributed significantly to the credit crisis. Of particular concern to these observers are that credit default swaps trade in the largely unregulated over-the-counter market as bilateral contracts involving counterparty risk and that they...

Many observers regard the world oil market as a puzzle. Why are oil prices so volatile? Why did prices spike in the summer of 2008, and what role did speculators play? How important is OPEC? Where are oil prices headed in the long run? Is "peak oil" a genuine concern? Any attempt to answer these...

During the recent financial crisis, major dealer banks -- that is, banks that intermediate markets for securities and derivatives -- suffered from new forms of bank runs. The most vivid examples are the 2008 failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Dealer banks are often parts of large...

It's fun to pass judgment on waste, size, usefulness, complexity, and excessive compensation. But as economists, we have an analytical structure for thinking about these questions. "I don’t understand it" doesn't mean "it's bad," or "regulation will improve it." That attitude pervades...

We study the rise of finance across a set of now-industrial economies. The long-run pattern of the growth of the income share of finance from the nineteenth century to current times in the United States is similar to some economies, but not all economies reach the same size and instead reach a...

The US financial services industry grew from 4.9 percent of GDP in 1980 to 7.9 percent of GDP in 2007. A sizeable portion of the growth can be explained by rising asset management fees, which in turn were driven by increases in the valuation of tradable assets, particularly equity. Another...

This paper investigates the spectacular rise and fall of structured finance. The essence of structured finance activities is the pooling of economic assets like loans, bonds, and mortgages, and the subsequent issuance of a prioritized capital structure of claims, known as tranches, against these...

During popular prime-time television shows, forensic investigators use specialized but wide-ranging scientific knowledge of chemical trace evidence, bacteria, DNA, teeth, insects, and other specialties to collect and sift evidence of possible crimes. In economics and finance, forensic...