The place of money capital in the theory of the firm is interdependent with the analysis of production, pricing, and capital investment. In this book I have examined those areas of economic theory that bear most directly on that analytical interdependence. In doing so, I have had principally in mind the needs of advanced students, including those who are making an initial approach to the subject at both undergraduate and graduate levels. I hope that my professional colleagues will be interested eavesdroppers, and that in those areas in which some novelty is proposed it might be thought that prospects exist for a meaningful reconstruction and new advances in the theory of the firm.

I have not set out, however, to construct a theory of the firm in its entirety. I have addressed the main issues of the relation between the firm's employment of real capital and money capital, and I have examined the linkage of those questions to the cost and availability of finance and relevant decision making in the firm. My perception of the needs of the student has determined the method and level of exposition. I have found, for example, that students have benefited from a reasonably painstaking exposition of the statistical foundations of probability theory and from a good degree of motivation for the mathematical development of such advanced topics as the utility function defined over stochastic arguments, the equilibrium theory of financial asset prices and yields, the cost of money capital, and investment decision criteria.