TITLE: Trace of adjugate
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: Let $A \in M(\mathbb{R}, n)$ and $C_A(\lambda)$ its characteristic polynomial. Let 
$$ \Gamma_A(\lambda) := (-1)^{n+1}\frac{C_A(\lambda) - C_A(0)}{\lambda} $$
Then, $\text{adj}(A) = \Gamma_A(A)$ which is a form of the Cramer's rule $\text{adj}(A)A = \det(A) I$ using the Cayley-Hamilton theorem.
There is an identitiy that 
$$ \text{tr} ( \text{adj} (A) ) = (-1)^{n+1} \Gamma_A(0)$$ 
Question: how is this identity derived? 
Background: I was studying Lemma 1.4 of this book on page 86, claim 6.

REPLY [2 votes]: This result is true for matrices over any field, we can give a simple algebraic proof:
The trace of $\text{adj}(A)$ is the sum of the principal minors of $A$, which corresponds, modulo the sign $(-1)^{n-1}$, with the coefficient $c_1$ of $X$ in $C_A(X)$. Now $\Gamma_A(X)$ has independent term $c_1$ (by construction), so $\Gamma_A(0)=c_1$ and $$\text{trace(adj}(A))=(-1)^{n-1}\Gamma_A(0).$$