THE PHILADELPHIA STOCK EXCHANGE was founded in 1790 as the first organized stock exchange in the United States. It calls itself one of North America's primary marketplaces for the trading of stocks, equity options, index options and currency options, as well as a leader in innovating new products and services. For instance, it uses a special mortgage finance index that is "a float-adjusted modified capitalization-weighted index designed to effectively represent the performance of the broad and diverse U.S. mortgage finance industry."

THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA FINANCE DEPARTMENT acts as the chief financial, accounting and budget officer of the City. The department's Budget Bureau prepares and directs oversight of the operating budget, provides financial forecasts, and updates the city's five-year financial plan.

THE WHARTON SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA is an eminent business school that bills itself as "the most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world." It says it has the largest, most cited business school faculty, with 280 standing and associate members for undergraduate, MBA, PhD, and executive programs. Wharton's Finance Department has four areas of specialization: "Banking and Financial Institutions, which entails the overall economic context affecting a firm's investments; Corporate Finance, concentrating on the financing and investment activities of an organization; Financial Instruments and Portfolio Management, which examines financial instruments and their market behavior; and International Finance, exploring the impact of such issues as foreign currency options and exchange rates parity on the multinational corporation."

FOX SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT TEMPLE UNIVERSITY has a Finance Department that says it is geared to study global financial markets. Its faculty includes the onetime president of the African Finance and Economics Association, and a former president of the Korea-America Finance. Another Fox professor has written "Health, Lifespan and Economic Activity: Why Poor Nations Remain Poor and Rich Nations Rich."