The study and practice of capital allocation, risk management, and the financial systems through which economies function.

Finance confronts structural incentives toward short-termism, risk externalization, and the systematic extraction of value from productive to financial activity. Questions of systemic risk and the socialization of losses while profits are privatized are built into the profession's structure.

Islamic finance — built on the prohibition of riba and the requirement of risk-sharing — represents a systematic attempt to align financial practice with ethical principle. The Sufi tradition's understanding of wealth as amana (trust) rather than property reframes financial decisions as stewardship obligations.