Ernest Bloch, an authority on corporate finance who taught at New York University and wrote widely on economic and financial affairs, died on May 15 in Tisch Hospital at N.Y.U. Medical Center.

Dr. Bloch, a former resident of lower Manhattan, was 77 and lived at Heritage Hills in Somers, N.Y.

The cause was liver and kidney failure, his family said.

Dr. Bloch wrote a classic work in his field, ''Inside Investment Banking,'' in 1986 (Irwin). He retired from N.Y.U. in 1991 but continued to teach there part-time until four years ago.

A native of Baden-Baden, Germany, he went to France to get an education when the Nazis came to power in 1933. He emigrated to the United States in 1939 and was a staff sergeant in the 10th Armored Division, interrogating German prisoners of war as Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army fought its way across France and Germany.

He graduated from City College in 1947 and received a master's degree at Columbia University in 1949. He received his Ph.D. at the New School for Social Research in 1962 while working as a research economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dr. Bloch joined the N.Y.U. faculty that year to teach corporate finance, monetary policy, and money and banking.

The author of many articles on those subjects, he was named the Charles W. Gerstenberg Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business Administration in 1966 and became chairman of the finance department in the late 1970s.

Dr. Bloch was a consultant to many private corporations and the Bank of Japan and organized an N.Y.U. program to train investment banking executives for Deutsche Bank.

Leading investment bankers visited his classes as guest lecturers.

Dr. Bloch is survived by his wife of 52 years, Amy Weiss Bloch, of Heritage Hills, and a son, Geoffrey, of Manhattan.