Capital-asset-pricing-model

The content is very clear, the exercises are complete and there are lots of examples. I specially like the cases based on real businesses. I used this book with an Advanced Finance class of my MBA program.
For those who like modeling there is a section dedicated to LP, IP and GP, very well explained but no Excel or LINDO solutions though.
If you are one that have fun with decision sciences, you can go ahead and solve them using solver or LINDO.
Overall, I recommend it for those looking to keep a good Capital Budgeting book.

The content is very clear, the exercises are complete and there are lots of examples. I specially like the cases based on real businesses. I used this book with an Advanced Finance class of my MBA program.
For those who like modeling there is a section dedicated to LP, IP and GP, very well explained but no Excel or LINDO solutions though.
If you are one that have fun with decision sciences, you can go ahead and solve them using solver or LINDO.
Overall, I recommend it for those looking to keep a good Capital Budgeting book.

Sorry to the author.
But I do want to ask him if he knows what he has written down.
Or at least I wonder if he wants the readers to understand his book.

I spent a lot of time for this book.
Even after finance class with this book as a textbook
and even after reading some other materials,
I am still saying to myself "what the xxxx is going on?" whenever I read this book. (I don't mean some arithmatics used there)

Some reviewers said that it would depend on who you are. Really?

I think I finished enough courses in statistics, economics, finance, and mathematics. And some of them are Ph.D level.
Do I need stronger backgound to understand?
Or Do I have to skip so many paragraghs in every pages?
So many typos? Anything conceptual?

This is a book designed for advanced MBAs (who want to know what current academic research in finance is about) or 1st-Y PhD specializing in Finance.

It covers many theoretical approaches in finance and points out the connections between them, providing a unified framework. This is very helpful as there was prior to this little understanding between old-CAPM types and more recent general equilibrium modelling. Now, if you want to go deeply into pure theory (esp. continuous time) modelling, go to Duffie, and good luck to understand it. There is a brief coverage of options and a very clear presentation of basic bond pricing and term structure.

The book also covers thoroughly empirical testing, especially GMM. The author shows how easy all this is to do, and points out many tricks and traps, providing intuition for how the various methods work. This part is I think quite original and very insightful.

There are also two surveys, on predictability of returns and the infamous equity premium puzzle, which are also very nice.

I love the informal style, with a rather chatty presentation, lots of pictures and intuition, and a short chapter format that makes it easy to read a little part.
The downside: sometimes the chatty style is not so clear and precise. Also, you'll have to go back and forth in the book since it is a lot about connections between the various approaches, which is good (that's the real plus of the book, but at first it can be a bit annoying).

To sum up, that's the book I'd recommand to sbd who has had some economics and some quantitative background and wants to really understand what people are doing.

(I guess the other reviewers prefer the 'theorem-proof' style of Duffie, who doesn't explain where the economics is - I'm quite surprised by their opinions, which seem to me rather rare).

I am a bit baffled by the negative reviews of this book. There is a very nice blend of theory and empirics. The writing style is that of an entertaining lecture - a boon for those of us who don't get to listen to John Cochrane every week. I like the connections drawn between asset pricing and macroeconomics (in fact I would have liked to hear more of Cochrane's thoughts here). The emphasis on the unifying stochastic discount factor framework gives the reader a good way to look at what would otherwise appear to be a number of different pricing theories. (This recalls Feynman's lectures on statistical mechanics where he points out that everything is a special case of the canonical distribution). Cochrane's chat about open problems, puzzles, anomolies, and warnings gives the reader helpful hints or ideas to examine. Once again, I am totally baffled by the negative reviews here.

No one who has lived through the last ten years can not have realized how tightly the economy has become coupled to the financial marketplace. Prof. Semmler has gone beyond that realization and has undertaken to examine the actual mechanics by which it occurs. In this excellent and intense introduction, current macroeconomic-financial models are explored; the reader will quickly appreciate how asset price booms and subsequent recessions actually work. Semmler's style is "to the point" and his enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. Anyone with an advanced undergraduate understanding of economics, as well as financial professionals, and scientists and engineers with a curiosity about macroeconomics and the financial marketplace will thoroughly enjoy this book.