The name Waldorf Astoria conjures images of Gilded Age opulence for the elite and the personalities that illuminated the Gilded Age in New York. Visit the old location on Fifth and 33rd and the current day incarnation on Park Avenue. Famed throughout the world, New York's Waldorf Astoria is quite simply the grandest of all grand hotels. Host to emperors, rajahs, potentates, and plutocrats--not to mention every US president since Grover Cleveland--its name has become synonymous with the epi...

Investment Banking: Institutions, Politics, and Law provides an economic rationale for the dominant role of investment banks in the capital markets, and uses it to explain both the historical evolution of the investment banking industry and also recent changes to its organization. Although investment decisions rely upon price-relevant information, it is impossible to establish property rights over it and hence is very hard to coordinate its exchange. The authors argue that investm...