This textbook takes a new and unique approach by re-focusing the education of students toward the function, pricing and institutional structure of the financial markets. While neglecting macroeconomic apparatus, it develops more fully the pricing of various financial instruments and the differences between instruments and institutions that operate in the financial markets. This text would be ideal for a one-semester course on financial markets taught within a finance department or business school. The text can also be used in an economics department for the course in money and banking where an instructor wishes to emphasize a micro finance perspective. By design, the course does not require nor overlap with macroeconomic topics taught elsewhere in the curriculum. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.