Finances

Economic discipline which studies the financing processes and choices through an analysis of pricing, hedging and rating of the activities to be financed. Finance (from the latin finis “end, term, cessation”) deals with financial instruments (or financial products) through which money flows are exchanged between individuals, companies and States.

It also deals with the markets on which such financial instruments are traded in order to transfer economic resources from financial surplus individuals to deficit ones. Compared to a productive investment, a financial investment is not necessarily aimed at creating real wealth.

There is a debate on ethical finance regarding the hypothesis that finance could be a zero-sum game, that is to say that it is only able to move money between economic actors, rather than a positive-sum game, therefore able to create wealth. Some doubt that financial exchange, in addition to sharing a “cake” value, could be able to enlarge it.