IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED since we first sat down
together and conceived of this book. We have now published 5 editions and reached well
over a million students. We were originally motivated to write this textbook by a central
insight: The core concepts in finance are simple and intuitive. What makes the subject challenging
is that it is often difficult for a novice to distinguish between these core ideas and
other intuitively appealing approaches that, if used in financial decision making, will lead
to incorrect decisions. Nothing has changed in the intervening years. De-emphasizing the
core concepts that underlie finance strips students of the essential intellectual tools they
need to differentiate between good and bad decision making. The book’s continued success
is a testament to the value of this approach.
We present corporate finance as an application of a set of simple, powerful ideas. At the
heart is the principal of the absence of arbitrage opportunities, or Law of One Price?Din
life, you don’t get something for nothing. This simple concept is a powerful and important tool
in financial decision making. By relying on it, and the other core principles in this book,
financial decision makers can avoid the bad decisions brought to light by the financial crisis
and still ongoing every day. We use the Law of One Price as a compass; it keeps financial
decision makers on the right track and is the backbone of the entire book.
New to This Edition
We have updated all text discussions and figures, tables, data cases, and facts to accurately
reflect developments in the field in the last few years. Specific highlights include the
following:
■Updates made throughout the text to reflect the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
Extensive updates made to Chapter 8 (Fundamentals of Capital Budgeting), Chapter 15
(Debt and Taxes), and Chapter 31 (International Corporate Finance).
■Added