[财务管理]The Theory of Corporate Finance-A Historical Overview 1983 Jensen.pdfVIP

The Theory of Corporate Finance: A Historical Overview Michael C. Jensen* mjensen@hbs.edu Clifford W. Smith, Jr.* The Modern Theory of Corporate Finance , Michael C. Jensen and Clifford W. Smith, Jr., Editors, (New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1984) pp. 2-20. 1 INTRODUCTION Our purpose is to provide a review of the development of the modern theory of corporate finance. Through the early 1950s the finance literature consisted in large part of ad hoc theories. Dewing (1919; 1953), the major corporate finance textbook for a generation, contains much institutional detail but little systematic analysis. It starts with the birth of a corporation and follows it through various policy decisions to its death (bankruptcy). Corporate financial theory prior to the 1950s was riddled with logical inconsistencies and was almost totally prescriptive, that is, normatively oriented. The major concerns of the field were optimal investment, financing, and dividend policies, but little consideration was given to the effect on these policies of individual incentives, or to the nature of equilibrium in financial markets. *Professor and Director, Managerial Economics Research Center; and Associate Professor, Graduate School of Management, University of Rochester, respectively. We are indebted to Harry DeAngelo, Linda DeAngelo, Helen Grieve, Shlomo Kalish, John Long, David Mayers, Charles Plosser, Richard Ruback, G. William Schwert, Rene Stulz, Lee Wakeman, Jerold Warner, Ross Watts, and Jerold Zimmerman for comments and suggestions. Jensen and Smith