International Macroeconomics for Business and Political Leaders explains the fundamentals of international macroeconomics in a very efficient and approachable text. It explores key macro concepts such as growth, unemployment, inflation, interest, and exchange rates. Crucially, it also examines how these markets are interconnected so that readers will fully understand why economic, political, and social shocks to nations, such as the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and Brazil, must be evaluated in the context of all three macroeconomic markets: goods and services, credit, and foreign exchange. This book is as relevant and useful to individuals who have successfully taken and passed a Principles of Economics course, or more, as it is to those who have never taken any economics in high school or college but are motivated to understand the way international economies act and react. It uses an innovative approach to teach supply and demand principles, without using graphs, so as to be understandable and accessible to any interested reader or audience. This is not a theory-for-theory's-sake textbook but a practice-oriented, common-sense approach to explaining international macroeconomics which quickly connects readers to real world events.

The Oxford Handbook of Banking, Second Edition provides an overview and analysis of developments and research in banking written by leading researchers in the field. This handbook will appeal to graduate students of economics, banking and finance, academics, practitioners, regulators, and policy makers. Consequently, the book strikes a balance between abstract theory, empirical analysis, and practitioner, and policy-related material.
The Handbook is split into five parts. Part I, The Theory of Banking, examines the role of banks in the wider financial system, why banks exist, how they function, and their corporate governance and risk management practices. Part II deals with Bank Operations and Performance. A range of issues are covered including bank performance, financial innovation, and technological change. Aspects relating to small business, consumer, and mortgage lending are analysed together with securitization, shadow banking, and payment systems. Part III entitled Regulatory and Policy Perspectives discusses central banking, monetary policy transmission, market discipline, and prudential regulation and supervision. Part IV of the book covers various Macroeconomic Perspectives in Banking. This part includes a discussion of systemic risk and banking and sovereign crises, the role of the state in finance and development as well as how banks influence real economic activity. The final Part V examines International Differences in Banking Structures and Environments. This part of the Handbook examines banking systems in the United States, European Union, Japan, Africa, Transition countries, and the developing nations of Asia and Latin America.

The financial markets are a rollercoaster and this book follows the same theme the seduction of money, our ruinous, heady and high stakes pursuit of it, the incredible fortunes and calamitous losses that have been made in its name, the new and significant threat of retail (armchair) investors wanting their piece of the pie, and the perpetual and foolish mismatch that has always existed and will always exist between our evolutionary programming and the design of the financial markets. The dominant theme that runs throughout the book ('Working out Wall Street') is actually a play on words, and relates both to the need to work out why Wall Street traders act so irrationally (e.g. using behavioural finance and evolutionary design to explain herding and panic selling), and the need to use physiological and sport science-related approaches to explain why working out (i.e. adopting exercise and diet-related practices usually applied to athletes) can significantly counter these behaviours. The phrase 'animal spirits' utilised in the concluding chapter title ('Taming Animal Spirits') refers to the seminal work of John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 classic work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and the idea that human emotions-animal spirits- remain a significant driver in (irrational and emotional) investing. The rationale for this book is clear; behavioural finance and neurofinance have opened the floodgates in terms of recognising the role of emotional investing in cyclical boom-and-bust scenarios but what is still missing is an answer to the question So what do we do about it? This book seeks, in as compelling and entertaining a fashion as possible, to provide that answer.

How a vast network of shadow credit financed European growth long before the advent of banking Prevailing wisdom dictates that, without banks, countries would be mired in poverty. Yet somehow much of Europe managed to grow rich long before the diffusion of banks. Dark Matter Credit draws on centuries of cleverly collected loan data from France to reveal how credit abounded well before banks opened their doors. This incisive book shows how a vast system of shadow credit enabled nearly a third of French families to borrow in 1740, and by 1840 funded as much mortgage debt as the American banking system of the 1950s. Dark Matter Credit traces how this extensive private network outcompeted banks and thrived prior to World War I-not just in France but in Britain, Germany, and the United States-until killed off by government intervention after 1918. Overturning common assumptions about banks and economic growth, the book paints a revealing picture of an until-now hidden market of thousands of peer-to-peer loans made possible by a network of brokers who matched lenders with borrowers and certified the borrowers' creditworthiness. A major work of scholarship, Dark Matter Credit challenges widespread misperceptions about French economic history, such as the notion that banks proliferated slowly, and the idea that financial innovation was hobbled by French law. By documenting how intermediaries in the shadow credit market devised effective financial instruments, this compelling book provides new insights into how countries can develop and thrive today.

The Oxford Handbook of Banking provides an overview and analysis of state-of-the-art research in banking written by leading researchers in the field. This handbook will appeal to graduate students of economics, banking and finance, academics, practitioners and policy makers. Consequently, the book strikes a balance between abstract theory, empirical analysis, and practitioner and policy-related material.
The handbook is split into five parts. Part I, The Theory of Banking, examines the role of banks in the wider financial system, why banks exist, how they function, and their legal and governance structures. Part II entitled Regulatory and Policy Perspectives discusses monetary policy, prudential regulation and supervision, and antitrust policy. Part III deals with Bank Performance. A number of issues are assessed including efficiency, financial innovation and technological change, globalization and ability to deliver small business, consumer, and mortgage lending services. Part IV of the book provides an overview of Macroeconomic Perspectives in Banking. This part includes a discussion of the determinants of bank failures and crises, and the impact on financial stability, institutional development, and economic growth. Part V examines International Differences in Banking Structures and Environments. This part of the handbook examines banking systems in the United States, Western Europe, Transition countries, Latin America, Japan and the developing nations of Asia.

As we consider the plight of our consumer-driven economy, it is easy to forget that money is about relationship: between individuals and between communities. In our current financial mess, it is worth reminding ourselves of community-based alternatives, and to look closely at microcredit, a model of peer lending to enable people to move out of poverty. From Bangladesh, from South Africa, from Ghana, and from the East End of London, we are given a worm's eye view of small scale work, of personal transformation, and the building of community. Small and local is still beautiful, and has much to teach us.

The Oxford Handbook of Banking provides an overview and analysis of state-of-the-art research in banking written by leading researchers in the field. This handbook will appeal to graduate students of economics, banking and finance, academics, practitioners and policy makers. Consequently, the book strikes a balance between abstract theory, empirical analysis, and practitioner and policy-related material.
The handbook is split into five parts. Part I, The Theory of Banking, examines the role of banks in the wider financial system, why banks exist, how they function, and their legal and governance structures. Part II entitled Regulatory and Policy Perspectives discusses monetary policy, prudential regulation and supervision, and antitrust policy. Part III of the book deals with bank performance. A number of issues are assessed including efficiency, financial innovation and technological change, globalization and ability to deliver small business, consumer, and mortgage lending services. Part IV of the book provides an overview of macroeconomic perspectives in banking. This part of the book includes a discussion of the determinants of bank failures and crises, and the impact on financial stability, institutional development, and economic growth. Part V examines International Differences In Banking Structures And Environments. This part of the handbook examines banking systems in the United States, Western Europe, Transition countries, Latin America, Japan and the Developing nations of Asia.

Contains Nearly 100 Pages of New Material

The recent financial crisis has shown that credit risk in particular and finance in general remain important fields for the application of mathematical concepts to real-life situations. While continuing to focus on common mathematical approaches to model credit portfolios, Introduction to Credit Risk Modeling, Second Edition presents updates on model developments that have occurred since the publication of the best-selling first edition.

New to the Second Edition

• An expanded section on techniques for the generation of loss distributions
• Introductory sections on new topics, such as spectral risk measures, an axiomatic approach to capital allocation, and nonhomogeneous Markov chains
• Updated sections on the probability of default, exposure-at-default, loss-given-default, and regulatory capital
• A new section on multi-period models
• Recent developments in structured credit

The financial crisis illustrated the importance of effectively communicating model outcomes and ensuring that the variation in results is clearly understood by decision makers. The crisis also showed that more modeling and more analysis are superior to only one model. This accessible, self-contained book recommends using a variety of models to shed light on different aspects of the true nature of a credit risk problem, thereby allowing the problem to be viewed from different angles.

This new textbook provides an up-to-date overview of international banking as the second decade of the twenty-first century unfolds. Integrating geo-economic, operational, institutional and regulatory changes in the financial sector, the volume's methodology incorporates specific case studies and research, combining theory with practical examples to illustrate the impact and consequences of past and present financial crises. The volume considers the core aspects of international banking, including its structural and technical features, historical context, institutional evolution in core markets, and wholesale, retail, investment and private banking. It uses specific examples from past and present literature, post-2008 case studies and histories, and research materials, offering a fully updated overview of how international banks respond to global crises, the origin, efficacy and evolution of financial markets, and the regulatory framework within which they function. One chapter is devoted to the evolution and potential of new markets, including the financial sectors of the BRICS and other emerging economies. Each chapter examines background, causes, impact and resolution, focusing on specific cases and their broader implications for the sector. This textbook is a guide to the new, and at times unchartered, landscape to be navigated by large domestic, cross-regional and global banks, and will be invaluable reading for students of finance, business and economics, as well as for those in the financial sector.

Financial stability is one of the key tenets of a central bank's functions. Since the financial crisis of 2007-2009, an area of hot debate is the extent to which the central bank should be involved with prudential regulation. This book examines the macro and micro-prudential regulatory frameworks and systems of the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada and Germany. Drawing on the regulator frameworks of these regions, this book examines the central banks' roles of crisis management, resolution and prudential regulation. Alison Lui compares the institutional structure of the new 'twin-peaks' model in the UK to the Australian model, and the multi-regulatory US model and the single regulatory Canadian model. The book also discusses the extent the central bank in these countries, as well as the ECB, are involved with financial stability, and argues that the institutional architecture and geographical closeness of the Bank of England and Financial Policy Committee give rise to the fear that the UK central bank may become another single super-regulator, which may provide the Bank of England with too much power. As a multi-regional, comparative study on the importance and effectiveness of prudential regulation, this book will be of great use and interest to students and researchers in finance and bank law, economics and banking.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of credit risk assessment and credit risk rating that meets the Advanced Internal Risk-Based (AIRB) approach of Basel II. Credit risk analysis looks at many risks and this book covers all the critical areas that credit professionals need to know, including country analysis, industry analysis, financial analysis, business analysis, and management analysis. Organized under two methodological approaches to credit analysis-a criteria-based approach, which is a hybrid of expert judgement and purely mathematical methodologies, and a mathematical approach using regression analysis to model default probability-the book covers a cross-section of industries including passenger airline, commercial real estate, and commercial banking. In three parts, the sections focus on hybrid models, statistical models, and credit management. While the book provides theory and principles, its emphasis is on practical applications, and will appeal to credit practitioners in the banking and investment community alongside college and university students who are preparing for a career in lending.

Credit and Community examines the history of consumer credit and debt in working class communities. Concentrating on forms of credit that were traditionally very dependent on personal relationships and social networks, such as mail-order catalogues and co-operatives, it demonstrates how community-based arrangements declined as more impersonal forms of borrowing emerged during the twentieth century.
Tallymen and check traders moved into doorstep money-lending during the 1960s, but in subsequent decades the loss of their best working class customers, owing to increased spending power and the emergence of a broader range of credit alternatives, forced them to focus on the 'financially excluded'. This 'sub-prime' market was open for exploitation by unlicensed lenders, and Sean O'Connell offers the first detailed historical investigation of illegal money-lending in the UK, encompassing the 'she usurers' of Edwardian Liverpool and the violent loan sharks of Blair's Britain.
O'Connell contrasts such commercial forms of credit with formal and informal co-operative alternatives, such as "diddlum clubs," "partners," and mutuality clubs. He provides the first history of the UK credit unions, revealing the importance of Irish and Caribbean immigrant volunteers, and explains the relative failure of the movement compared with Ireland.
Drawing on a wide range of neglected sources, including the archives of consumer credit companies, the records of the co-operative and credit union movements, and government papers, Credit and Community makes a strong contribution to historical understandings of credit and debt. Oral history testimony from both sides of the credit divide is used totelling effect, offering key insights into the complex nature of the relationship between borrowers and lenders.

The 'shadow banking system' refers to a system of credit-provision occurring outside of the official regulatory perimeter of commercial banks. Facilitated by securitization vehicles, mutual funds, hedge funds, investment banks and mortgage companies, the function and regulation of these shadow banking institutions has come under increasing scrutiny after the subprime crisis of 2007-8. Matthias Thiemann examines how regulators came to tolerate the emergence of links between the banking and shadow banking systems. Through a comparative analysis of the US, France, the Netherlands and Germany, he argues that fractured domestic and global governance systems determining the regulatory approach to these links ultimately aggravated the recent financial crisis. Since 2008, shadow banking has even expanded and the incentives for banks to bend the rules have only increased with increasing regulation. Thiemann's empirical work suggests how state-finance relations could be restructured to keep the banking system under state control and avoid future financial collapses.

In this book Christian Prem features new innovations on several levels. On a conceptual level he presents a complete restructuring and modularisation of the field of lending theory. On a formal level he bestows great care on providing precise definitions and promotes notational standardisation. On a technical level the development of an algorithm to solve repayment games automatically is thoroughly documented. Eventually, new theoretic results on the performance of various credit schemes are established, the quality of existing lending schemes is scrutinised and new more efficient mechanisms are presented. The content therefore inspires theorists as well as it provides well-grounded advice to practitioners in the lending industry. Altogether this thesis is a major step towards improving the quality and applicability of lending theory.

Credit analysis is an important factor in judging investment value. Fundamentally sound credit analysis can offer more insight into the value of an investment and lead to greater profits. This study presents a professional framework for understanding and managing a successful corporate or municipal bond analysis, while providing informative case studies from well--known private and government organizations.

More than one billion people still live below the poverty line - most of them in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Financial inclusion is a major issue, as more than three-quarters of the numbers of poor and disadvantaged women and men do not have access to financial products and services, such as bank accounts, affordable and suitable loans, and insurance. The key objective of this book is to provide practical case studies of financial inclusion, rather than focus on academic debates such as the ideological basis of promoting microfinance. Using the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals as an overall framing of the issues, it shows how poor and disadvantaged women and men can be bankable if the right facilitation for maximizing opportunities and addressing constraints are in place. Case studies confirm that achieving inclusive and sustainable access to financial products and services goes beyond simply enabling poor and disadvantaged women and men to have access to credit, or the ability to open a bank account. Examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America demonstrate encouraging progress in making microcredit accessible to millions of poor people. The foremost challenge, however, has been to ensure that they have access to, and usage intensity of, suitable and affordable financial products and services that meet the needs of their livelihoods as well as risks and mitigation strategies. This requires understanding that poor and disadvantaged women and men do not exist in isolation from complex and interdependent functions in the financial system, which includes a number of actors, diversified services, constraints (not just symptoms) and capacities and incentives. Overall, the book provides a rich source of examples of how building inclusive financial systems can empower the world's poor - by increasing income and employment opportunities, securing livelihoods and reducing poverty.

"A clear and comprehensive treatment of credit risk models by two of the leading authorities in the field. It will become the standard reference for both academic researchers and practitioners."--Michael J. Brennan, The Anderson School at UCLA

"Duffie and Singleton provide the first comprehensive, yet readable, treatment of the challenging subject of credit risk. This book will undoubtedly become the ultimate reference for both academics and risk professionals who care to venture beyond the traditional alleys."--Michel Crouhy, Head of Business Analytic Solutions, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

"Duffie and Singleton have written an indispensable guide both to the models and to their implementation. The mathematical workings of the models are conveyed with superb clarity and intuition. Just as importantly, the presentation is well grounded in the economic and institutional features of credit markets. We thereby gain insight into the empirical plausibility of modeling assumptions and guidance on robust model calibration."--Michael Gordy

"Darrell Duffie and Kenneth Singleton have set the standard on credit modeling. Not only is the book appealing to an academic but it also speaks to practitioners. It has the double virtue of being elegant and practical. Further, many if not most of the results are original to the authors."--Larry Eisenberg, President, The Risk Engineering Company

"I like this book very much and shall use it profitably both for my own research and teaching. Duffie and Singleton develop the intellectual basis for understanding, modeling, and measuring credit risk and then develop the issue of risk management. This approach is both intuitive and natural. I canthink of no scholars better qualified than they to embark on this ambitious task."--Suresh M. Sundaresan, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

"Overall, the book succeeds in motivating the reader to consider the alternative approaches to modeling credit risk. . . . Although the book is technically rigorous, the presentation is straightforward so even a casual reader will learn from the authors' insights. Moreover, the seasoned analyst will benefit from the concise summary of many existing techniques."--Amnon Levy, "Risk"

Credit to Capabilities focuses on the controversial topic of microcredit's impact on women's empowerment and, especially, on the neglected question of how microcredit transforms women's agency. Based on interviews with hundreds of economically and socially vulnerable women from peasant households, this book highlights the role of the associational mechanism - forming women into groups that are embedded in a vast network and providing the opportunity for face-to-face participation in group meetings - in improving women's capabilities. This book reveals the role of microcredit groups in fostering women's social capital, particularly their capacity of organizing collective action for public goods and for protecting women's welfare. It argues that, in the Indian context, microcredit groups are becoming increasingly important in rural civil societies. Throughout, the book maintains an analytical distinction between married women in male-headed households and women in female-headed households in discussing the potentials and the limitations of microcredit's social and economic impacts.

The permanent building societies of England grew from humble beginnings as a multitude of small and localized institutions in the nineteenth century to become the dominant players in the house mortgage market by the inter-war period. Throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the movement cultivated an image of being a champion of home ownership for the working classes, but housing historians have questioned whether building societies really lived up to this claim. This study fills a major gap in the historiography of the movement by investigating the class profile of building society members, and how the design of different building societies affected their accessibility, efficiency, and risk-taking practices between 1880 and 1939. These themes are explored using case studies of several building societies from this period and drawing upon extensive archival records. The Building Society Promise shows that building societies did lend to working-class households before the First and Second World Wars, with some societies showing a greater commitment to working-class home ownership than others. What ultimately affected the outreach of individual societies was the quality of information they possessed, which in turn was largely determined by the types of agency networks they used to find and select borrowers. The phenomenal growth of some of these institutions in the inter-war period, however, and the ensuing competition which emerged between them, brought about profound changes in their firm structure which impaired their ability to reach out to lower-income households as efficiently as before. The findings of this research are relevant to both past and present debates about the optimal design of financial institutions in overcoming social exclusion in credit markets, and the deleterious effects that firm growth, market competition, and managerial self-interest can have on their performance and stability.

Praise for Chain of Blame

The truth behind America's housing and mortgage crisis

"Two of the smartest, most entertaining investigative reporters alive, describe one of the most important financial stories of our time. If you had any skin at all in the housing boom, you've got to read the story of exactly how that boom went bust. As Paul Muolo did with the S&L crisis of the '80s, he and Mathew Padilla have now become the chief chroniclers of the subprime crisis."
--David Asman, Host of America's Nightly Scoreboard on Fox Business Network and Forbes on Fox on Fox News Channel, and former op-ed editor of the Wall Street Journal

"Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla display their deep knowledge of the mortgage industry and all its players. Chain of Blame is a comprehensive examination of a crisis that affects us all."
--Scott Cohn, Senior Correspondent, CNBC

In the summer of 2007, the subprime empire that Wall Street had built all came crashing down. On average, fifty lenders a month were going bust--and the people responsible for the crisisincluded not justunregulated loan brokers andcon artists, but also investment bankers and home loan institutions traditionally perceived as completely trustworthy.

Chain of Blame chronicles this incredible disaster, with a specific focus on the players who participated in such a fundamentally flawed fiasco. Authors Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla, well-regarded journalists for National Mortgage News and the Orange County Register respectively, reveal the truth behind how this crisis occurred, what individuals and institutions--from lenders and brokers to some of the biggest investment banks in the world--were doing during this criticaltime, and who is ultimately responsible for what happened.

Why did America embrace consumer credit over the course of the twentieth century, when most other countries did not? How did American policy makers by the late twentieth century come to believe that more credit would make even poor families better off? This book traces the historical emergence of modern consumer lending in America and France. If Americans were profligate in their borrowing, the French were correspondingly frugal. Comparison of the two countries reveals that America's love affair with credit was not primarily the consequence of its culture of consumption, as many writers have observed, nor directly a consequences of its less generous welfare state. It emerged instead from evolving coalitions between fledgling consumer lenders seeking to make their business socially acceptable and a range of non-governmental groups working to promote public welfare, labor, and minority rights. In France, where a similar coalition did not emerge, consumer credit continued to be perceived as economically regressive and socially risky.

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) assess the creditworthiness of debt issuers on financial markets. They are private companies and the ratings they issue are judgements about the prospect of repayment of debt by an issuer in time and in full. A rating is not an investment recommendation, but it is an opinion about the creditworthiness of a financial product or an issuing bank, government, supra- or sub-national institution. In recent years CRAs have gained an authority in bond markets that far surpasses their original design. The financial crisis of 2008 thrust the CRAs into the spotlight as their highly rated financial products turned out to be toxic assets. CRAs were blamed not only for their excessively optimistic ratings, but also for their complicity in creating them. This short book introduces and explores the complex world of the credit rating industry: how it works, how it has evolved, the role it played in the financial crisis, and how it is regulated. Giulia Mennillo shows, as constitutive actors of global financial capitalism, CRAs have a social and political relevance that reaches well beyond finance into areas of transport, infrastructure, education and health and their impact is emblematic of the increasing financialization of our world.

Make your money make a difference and enjoy attractive returns Small Money, Big Impact explores and explains the globally growing importance of impact investing. Today, the investor's perspective has become as important as the actual social impact. Based on their experience with over 25 million micro borrowers, the authors delve into the mechanics, considerations, data and strategies that make microloans and impact investing an attractive asset class. From the World Bank to the individual investor, impact investing is attracting more and more attention. Impact investing is a global megatrend and is reshaping the way people invest as pension funds, insurance companies, foundations, family offices and private investors jump on board. This book explains for the first time how it works, why it works and what you should know if you're ready to help change the world. Impact investing has proven over the last 20 years as the first-line offense against crushing poverty. Over two billion people still lack access to basic financial services, which are essential for improving their livelihood. Investors have experienced not only social and environmental impact, but have received attractive, stable and uncorrelated returns for over 15 years. This guide provides the latest insights and methodologies that help you reap the rewards of investing in humanity. * Explore the global impact investing phenomenon * Learn how microloans work, and how they make a difference * Discover why investors are increasingly leaning into impact investing * Consider the factors that inform impact investing decisions Part social movement and part financial strategy, impact investing offers the unique opportunity for investors to power tremendous change with a small amount of money expanding their portfolios as they expand their own global impact. Microfinance allows investors at any level to step in where banks refuse to tread, offering opportunity to those who need it most. Small Money, Big Impact provides the expert guidance you need to optimize the impact on your portfolio and the world.

Credit to Capabilities focuses on the controversial topic of microcredit's impact on women's empowerment and, especially, on the neglected question of how microcredit transforms women's agency. Based on interviews with hundreds of economically and socially vulnerable women from peasant households, this book highlights the role of the associational mechanism - forming women into groups that are embedded in a vast network and providing the opportunity for face-to-face participation in group meetings - in improving women's capabilities. This book reveals the role of microcredit groups in fostering women's social capital, particularly their capacity of organizing collective action for public goods and for protecting women's welfare. It argues that, in the Indian context, microcredit groups are becoming increasingly important in rural civil societies. Throughout, the book maintains an analytical distinction between married women in male-headed households and women in female-headed households in discussing the potentials and the limitations of microcredit's social and economic impacts.