Biographical note

Richard A. Brealey - Emeritus Professor of Finance at London Business School. He is the former president of the European Finance Association and a former director of the American Finance Association. He is a fellow of the British Academy and has served as a special adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England and director of a number of financial institutions. Other books written by Professor Brealey include Introduction to Risk and Return from Common Stocks. Stewart C. Myers - Emeritus Professor of Financial Economics at MITs Sloan School of Management. He is past president of the American Finance Association, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a principal of the Brattle Group Inc., and a retired director of Entergy Corporation. His research is primarily concerned with the valuation of real and financial assets, corporate financial policy, and financial aspects of government regulation of business. He is the author of influential research papers on many topics, including adjusted present value, rate of return regulation, pricing and capital allocation in insurance, real options, and moral hazard and information issues in capital structure decisions. Alan Marcus is the Mario J. Gabelli Professor of Finance in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. He received his PhD in economics from MIT. Professor Marcus has been a visiting professor at the Athens Laboratory of Business Administration and at MIT's Sloan School of Management and has served as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Marcus has published widely in the fields of capital markets and portfolio management. He also spent two years at the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), where he developed models of mortgage pricing and credit risk. He currently serves on the Research Foundation Advisory Board of the CFA Institute.