Introduction in Finance

2021/2022

Учебный год

ENG

Обучение ведется на английском языке

6

Кредиты

Кто читает:

Отдел сопровождения учебного процесса в Совместном бакалавриате ВШЭ-РЭШ

Статус:

Курс по выбору

Когда читается:

4-й курс, 3, 4 модуль

Преподаватель

Шпренгер Карстен

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course is a first course in finance and will first give an overview over the most common financial instruments, contemporary financial markets and financial intermediaries. In what follows, it covers the basic topics in Corporate Finance and Investments. Core concepts will include the time value of money, opportunity costs, arbitrage pricing, bond valuation, stock valuation, concepts of risk, portfolio theory, asset pricing, market efficiency, and capital structure. Financial markets and corporations generate a large quantity of data. An important part of the course will be to visualize and analyze price data for different financial instruments (stocks, bonds, indices, derivatives). The programming language of choice for this course is R, and you are highly encouraged to learn its basics. This gives you a single tool to perform such diverse tasks as data visualization, finding polynomial roots (e.g., an internal rate of return), bond valuation, portfolio optimization, estimating factor models, and derivative pricing.

Learning Objectives

• After learning the course, students will know necessary basics for evaluating different management decisions and their influence on corporate performance and value; how to analyse corporate behaviour in capital markets and the relationship of agent and principal in raising funds, allocating capital, distributing returns.
• Students will be able to work with information from a variety of sources, especially data from financial statements and financial data from open access; generalise and discuss the results of theoretical and empirical studies and to reveal the possible directions for further research in examined area.
• Students will have skills of applying different models to value company’s assets and capital; justify the efficiency of company’s strategic decisions (investment decisions, financing decisions, payout decisions) and make recommendations; reveal and analyse factors affecting company value.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• The main objective of the course is to provide the conceptual background for corporate financial analysis from the point of corporate value creation. The course develops theoretical framework for understanding and analysing major financial problems of modern firm in the market environment.

Course Contents

• Introduction
• Interest rates and compounding, Present value and future value, Some shortcuts: annuities and perpetuities
• A Simple Theory of financial markets: The Fisher model
• Stock valuation: The dividend discount model
• Financial statements
• Capital budgeting
• Bond valuation, term structure and interest rate risk
• Derivatives: Forwards, futures, swaps, and options
• Risk and return
• Market Efficiency
• Capital Structure and Payout Policy

Assessment Elements

• Class participation and attendance
  Full credit for meaningful participation in class discussions
• Homework assignments
  Each homework assignment should be submitted via ny.nes.ru (unless otherwise stated) before the due date and time. Homework assignments turned in more than 1 minute late and less than 24 hours late receive a penalty of 20%. Assignments more than 24 hours late receive zero points.
• Mid-term test
• Final test

Interim Assessment

• 2021/2022 3rd module
  0.1 * Class participation and attendance + 0.45 * Final test + 0.25 * Mid-term test + 0.2 * Homework assignments
• 2021/2022 4th module
  0.2 * Homework assignments + 0.45 * Final test + 0.1 * Class participation and attendance + 0.25 * Mid-term test

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Investments, Bodie, Z., 2005
• Investments, Bodie, Z., 2008
• Investments, Bodie, Z., 2014

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Corporate finance, Berk, J., 2014