This volume is a milestone toward developing a more comprehensive understanding of corporate financial performance. The authors review both the factors that cause the financial performance of some firms to be better than others at a point in time and those factors that influence the trajectory of firm financial performance over time. In addressing these issues, the book considers theoretical and empirical work on financial performance, drawn from several literatures, and also presents empirical results. The goals of the book are to improve the understanding of firm financial performance by developing a more integrated framework and to develop a research agenda on what is learned from this research.