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.

The definitive history of pawnbroking in the United States from the nation's founding through the Great Depression, "In Hock" demonstrates that the pawnshop was essential to the rise of capitalism. The class of working poor created by this economic tide could make ends meet only, Wendy A. Woloson argues, by regularly pawning household objects to supplement inadequate wages. Nonetheless, businessmen, reformers, and cultural critics claimed that pawnshops promoted vice, and employed anti-Semitic stereotypes to cast their proprietors as greedy and cold-hearted. Using personal correspondence, business records, and other rich archival sources to uncover the truth behind the rhetoric, Woloson brings to life a diverse cast of characters and shows that pawnbrokers were in fact shrewd businessmen, often from humble origins, who possessed sophisticated knowledge of a wide range of goods in various resale markets. A much-needed new look at a misunderstood institution, "In Hock" is both a first-rate academic study of a largely ignored facet of the capitalist economy and a resonant portrait of the economic struggles of generations of Americans.

From the late 1990s, the spectacular growth of a secondary market for credit through derivatives has been matched by the emergence of mathematical modelling analysing the credit risk embedded in these contracts. This book aims to provide a broad and deep overview of this modelling, covering statistical analysis and techniques, modelling of default of both single and multiple entities, counterparty risk, Gaussian and non-Gaussian modelling, and securitisation. Both reduced-form and firm-value models for the default of single entities are considered in detail, with extensive discussion of both their theoretical underpinnings and practical usage in pricing and risk. For multiple entity modelling, the now notorious Gaussian copula is discussed with analysis of its shortcomings, as well as a wide range of alternative approaches including multivariate extensions to both firm-value and reduced form models, and continuous-time Markov chains. One important case of multiple entities modelling - counterparty risk in credit derivatives - is further explored in two dedicated chapters. Alternative non-Gaussian approaches to modelling are also discussed, including extreme-value theory and saddle-point approximations to deal with tail risk. Finally, the recent growth in securitisation is covered, including house price modelling and pricing models for asset-backed CDOs. The current credit crisis has brought modelling of the previously arcane credit markets into the public arena. Lipton and Rennie with their excellent team of contributors, provide a timely discussion of the mathematical modelling that underpins both credit derivatives and securitisation. Though technical in nature, the pros and cons of various approaches attempt to provide a balanced view of the role that mathematical modelling plays in the modern credit markets. This book will appeal to students and researchers in statistics, economics, and finance, as well as practitioners, credit traders, and quantitative analysts

Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case--the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth analyze the lessons from this important historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, Drelichman and Voth examine the incentives and returns of lenders. They provide powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults--they thrive. Drelichman and Voth also demonstrate that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The authors unearth unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, Lending to the Borrower from Hell offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults.

This 1971 book reviews and criticises the widely accepted hypothesis that the decline of the inland bill of exchange in Britain in the nineteenth century was largely due to the process of bank amalgamation, which linked bank branches in areas of excess demand for money with branches having surplus funds. Dr Nishimura argues that the introduction of the telegraph and steamship in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, by making both supply and demand more certain, relieved the merchant of the necessity to hold large stocks of goods in anticipation of orders. This book will be useful for other researchers in this field.

For most Americans, the savings and loan industry is defined by the fraud, ineptitude and failures of the 1980s. However, these events overshadow a long history in which thrifts played a key role in helping thousands of households buy homes. First appearing in the 1830s savings and loans, then known as building and loans, encourage their working-class members to adhere to the principles of thrift and mutual co-operation as a way to achieve the 'American Dream' of home ownership. This book traces the development of this industry from its origins as a movement of a loosely affiliated collection of institutions into a major element of America's financial markets. It also analyses how diverse groups of Americans, including women, ethnic Americans and African Americans, used thrifts to improve their lives and elevate their positions in society. Finally the overall historical perspective sheds new light on the events of the 1980s and analyses the efforts to rehabilitate the industry in the 1990s.

Credit derivatives have enjoyed explosive growth in the last decade, particularly synthetic Collateralized Debt Obligations (synthetic CDOs). This modern book describes the state-of-the-art in quantitative and computational modeling of CDOs. Beginning with an overview of the structured finance landscape, readers are introduced to the basic modeling concepts necessary to model and value simple credit derivatives. The modeling, valuation and risk management of synthetic CDOs are described and a detailed picture of the behavior of these complex instruments is built up. The final chapters introduce more advanced topics such as portfolio management of synthetic CDOs and hedging techniques. Detailing the latest models and techniques, this is essential reading for quantitative analysts, traders and risk managers working in investment banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions, and for graduates intending to enter the industry. It is also ideal for academics who need be informed with the best current practice in the credit derivatives industry.

Data assimilation is an approach that combines observations and model output, with the objective of improving the latter. This book places data assimilation into the broader context of inverse problems and the theory, methods, and algorithms that are used for their solution. It provides a framework for, and insight into, the inverse problem nature of data assimilation, emphasizing "why" and not just "how". Methods and diagnostics are emphasized, enabling readers to readily apply them to their own field of study. Readers will find:* A comprehensive guide that is accessible to nonexperts.* Numerous examples and diverse applications from a broad range of domains, including geophysics and geophysical flows, environmental acoustics, medical imaging, mechanical and biomedical engineering, economics and finance, and traffic control and urban planning.* The latest methods for advanced data assimilation, combining variational and statistical approaches.

Grounded in literature from the sociology of finance and international political economy, and informed by extensive empirical research, The Everyday Life of Global Finance explores the unprecedented relationships that now bind Anglo-American society with the financial markets. As mutual funds have increased in popularity and pension provision has been transformed, many more individuals and households have come to invest in stocks and shares. As consumer borrowing has risen dramatically and mortgage finance has embraced those deemed sub-prime, so the repayments of credit card holders and mortgagors have provided the basis for the issue and trading of bonds and other market instruments.
The Everyday Life of Global Finance is an ambitious and innovative contribution to our understanding of the contemporary financial world. It shows how financial market networks have come to extend well beyond Wall Street and the City of London, becoming embedded and embodied in routine saving and borrowing in the US and UK. Society's new-found relationships with the markets are also shown, however, to be marked by stark inequalities, manifest contradictions, and political dissent.

Credit risk is today one of the most intensely studied topics in quantitative finance. This book provides an introduction and overview for readers who seek an up-to-date reference to the central problems of the field and to the tools currently used to analyze them. The book is aimed at researchers and students in finance, at quantitative analysts in banks and other financial institutions, and at regulators interested in the modeling aspects of credit risk.

David Lando considers the two broad approaches to credit risk analysis: that based on classical option pricing models on the one hand, and on a direct modeling of the default probability of issuers on the other. He offers insights that can be drawn from each approach and demonstrates that the distinction between the two approaches is not at all clear-cut. The book strikes a fruitful balance between quickly presenting the basic ideas of the models and offering enough detail so readers can derive and implement the models themselves. The discussion of the models and their limitations and five technical appendixes help readers expand and generalize the models themselves or to understand existing generalizations. The book emphasizes models for pricing as well as statistical techniques for estimating their parameters. Applications include rating-based modeling, modeling of dependent defaults, swap- and corporate-yield curve dynamics, credit default swaps, and collateralized debt obligations.

How the American government has long used financial credit programs to create economic opportunities Federal housing finance policy and mortgage-backed securities have gained widespread attention in recent years because of the 2008 financial crisis, but issues of government credit have been part of American life since the nation's founding. From the 1780s, when a watershed national land credit policy was established, to the postwar foundations of our current housing finance system, American Bonds examines the evolution of securitization and federal credit programs. Sarah Quinn shows that since the Westward expansion, the U.S. government has used financial markets to manage America's complex social divides, and politicians and officials across the political spectrum have turned to land sales, home ownership, and credit to provide economic opportunity without the appearance of market intervention or direct wealth redistribution. Highly technical systems, securitization, and credit programs have been fundamental to how Americans determined what they could and should owe one another. Over time, government officials embraced credit as a political tool that allowed them to navigate an increasingly complex and fractured political system, affirming the government's role as a consequential and creative market participant. Neither intermittent nor marginal, credit programs supported the growth of powerful industries, from railroads and farms to housing and finance; have been used for disaster relief, foreign policy, and military efforts; and were promoters of amortized mortgages, lending abroad, venture capital investment, and mortgage securitization. Illuminating America's market-heavy social policies, American Bonds illustrates how political institutions became involved in the nation's lending practices.

For most Americans, the savings and loan industry is defined by the fraud, ineptitude and failures of the 1980s. However, these events overshadow a long history in which thrifts played a key role in helping thousands of households buy homes. First appearing in the 1830s savings and loans, then known as building and loans, encourage their working-class members to adhere to the principles of thrift and mutual co-operation as a way to achieve the 'American Dream' of home ownership. This book traces the development of this industry from its origins as a movement of a loosely affiliated collection of institutions into a major element of America's financial markets. It also analyses how diverse groups of Americans, including women, ethnic Americans and African Americans, used thrifts to improve their lives and elevate their positions in society. Finally the overall historical perspective sheds new light on the events of the 1980s and analyses the efforts to rehabilitate the industry in the 1990s.

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are expected to provide investors with an informed and unbiased view on securities' debt risk; the risk that issuers will fail to make promised interest or principal payments when they are due. The agencies provide judgements on the creditworthiness of bonds issued by a wide spectrum of entities, including corporations, non-profit firms, special purpose entities, sovereign nations and state and municipal governments. This book explores the regulation and reform of credit rating agencies with a focus on their performance and failures in recent years.

Randall Germain explores the changing political economy of finance at the global level. He relates changes in global finance to wider changes in the organization of the international economy, and considers how commercial and investment banks have responded institutionally to these changes. Changes in the institutional organization of credit have rendered traditional policy instruments for controlling credit less useful today than in the past. Germain thus argues that the international organization of credit is likely to be relatively unstable into the twenty-first century, and the role of states within the global credit system will be precarious.

This collection is the first comprehensive selection of readings focusing on corporate bankruptcy. Its main purpose is to explore the nature and efficiency of corporate reorganization using interdisciplinary approaches drawn from law, economics, business, and finance. Substantive areas covered include the role of credit, creditors' implicit bargains, nonbargaining features of bankruptcy, workouts of agreements, alternatives to bankruptcy, and proceedings in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan. The Honorable Richard A. Posner, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, offers a foreword to the collection.

The long-awaited, comprehensive guide to practical credit risk modeling Credit Risk Analytics provides a targeted training guide for risk managers looking to efficiently build or validate in-house models for credit risk management. Combining theory with practice, this book walks you through the fundamentals of credit risk management and shows you how to implement these concepts using the SAS credit risk management program, with helpful code provided. Coverage includes data analysis and preprocessing, credit scoring; PD and LGD estimation and forecasting, low default portfolios, correlation modeling and estimation, validation, implementation of prudential regulation, stress testing of existing modeling concepts, and more, to provide a one-stop tutorial and reference for credit risk analytics. The companion website offers examples of both real and simulated credit portfolio data to help you more easily implement the concepts discussed, and the expert author team provides practical insight on this real-world intersection of finance, statistics, and analytics. SAS is the preferred software for credit risk modeling due to its functionality and ability to process large amounts of data. This book shows you how to exploit the capabilities of this high-powered package to create clean, accurate credit risk management models. * Understand the general concepts of credit risk management * Validate and stress-test existing models * Access working examples based on both real and simulated data * Learn useful code for implementing and validating models in SAS Despite the high demand for in-house models, there is little comprehensive training available; practitioners are left to comb through piece-meal resources, executive training courses, and consultancies to cobble together the information they need. This book ends the search by providing a comprehensive, focused resource backed by expert guidance. Credit Risk Analytics is the reference every risk manager needs to streamline the modeling process.

An introduction to economic applications of the theory of continuous-time finance that strikes a balance between mathematical rigor and economic interpretation of financial market regularities. This book introduces the economic applications of the theory of continuous-time finance, with the goal of enabling the construction of realistic models, particularly those involving incomplete markets. Indeed, most recent applications of continuous-time finance aim to capture the imperfections and dysfunctions of financial markets-characteristics that became especially apparent during the market turmoil that started in 2008. The book begins by using discrete time to illustrate the basic mechanisms and introduce such notions as completeness, redundant pricing, and no arbitrage. It develops the continuous-time analog of those mechanisms and introduces the powerful tools of stochastic calculus. Going beyond other textbooks, the book then focuses on the study of markets in which some form of incompleteness, volatility, heterogeneity, friction, or behavioral subtlety arises. After presenting solutions methods for control problems and related partial differential equations, the text examines portfolio optimization and equilibrium in incomplete markets, interest rate and fixed-income modeling, and stochastic volatility. Finally, it presents models where investors form different beliefs or suffer frictions, form habits, or have recursive utilities, studying the effects not only on optimal portfolio choices but also on equilibrium, or the price of primitive securities. The book strikes a balance between mathematical rigor and the need for economic interpretation of financial market regularities, although with an emphasis on the latter.

Microcredit is part of a global trend of financial inclusion that brings banking services, especially small loans, to the world's poor. In this book, Caroline Schuster explores Paraguayan solidarity lending as a window into the tensions between social development and global finance. Social Collateral tracks collective debt across the commercial society and smuggling economies at the Paraguayan border by examining group loans made to women by nonprofit development programs. These highly regulated loans are secured through mutual support and peer pressure - social collateral - rather than through physical collateral. This story of social collateral necessarily includes an interwoven account about the feminization of solidarity lending. At its core is an economy of gender - from pink - collar financial work, to men's committees, to women smugglers. At stake are interdependencies that bind borrowers and lenders, financial technologies, and Paraguayan development in ways that structure both global inequality and global opportunity.

Wahrend der Laufzeit eines Kredits kann sich aus unterschiedlichsten Grunden die Notwendigkeit einer Vertragsanderung bzw. einer AEnderung der ursprunglich vereinbarten Kreditverbindlichkeit ergeben. Praktisch relevant wird dies im Falle von Prolongationen, Krediterweiterungen, Stundungen, Tilgungsanderungen und Tilgungsaussetzungen, Umschuldungen, Konditionenanpassungen oder der Ersetzung des Kredits durch einen neuen. Ergibt sich wahrend der Laufzeit der Kreditverbindlichkeit eine rechtliche Veranderung, so liegt es nahe, dass eine solche Veranderung Auswirkungen auf die zur Sicherung dieser Verbindlichkeit bestellten Kreditsicherheiten hat. Diese Auswirkungen untersucht die Autorin am Beispiel der Akquisitionsfinanzierung, sprich der Finanzierung von Unternehmenskaufen. Da Sicherungsvertrage in der Praxis zudem fast ausschliesslich formularmassig vereinbart werden, bezieht die Autorin auch einige AGB-rechtliche Fragestellungen mit ein.

Focuses on the Chinese government's credit programs designed to reduce rural poverty, examining how programs function, their impact on the poor, and how they might be adjusted in the future in order to be more effective. Explains the formation and function of financial institutions in rural areas, a

How the American government has long used financial credit programs to create economic opportunities Federal housing finance policy and mortgage-backed securities have gained widespread attention in recent years because of the 2008 financial crisis, but issues of government credit have been part of American life since the nation's founding. From the 1780s, when a watershed national land credit policy was established, to the postwar foundations of our current housing finance system, American Bonds examines the evolution of securitization and federal credit programs. Sarah Quinn shows that since the Westward expansion, the U.S. government has used financial markets to manage America's complex social divides, and politicians and officials across the political spectrum have turned to land sales, home ownership, and credit to provide economic opportunity without the appearance of market intervention or direct wealth redistribution. Highly technical systems, securitization, and credit programs have been fundamental to how Americans determined what they could and should owe one another. Over time, government officials embraced credit as a political tool that allowed them to navigate an increasingly complex and fractured political system, affirming the government's role as a consequential and creative market participant. Neither intermittent nor marginal, credit programs supported the growth of powerful industries, from railroads and farms to housing and finance; have been used for disaster relief, foreign policy, and military efforts; and were promoters of amortized mortgages, lending abroad, venture capital investment, and mortgage securitization. Illuminating America's market-heavy social policies, American Bonds illustrates how political institutions became involved in the nation's lending practices.

An institutional investor's guide to the burgeoning field of reverse mortgage securitization

"Reverse Mortgages and Linked Securities" is a contributed title comprising many of the leading minds in the Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM) industry, including reverse mortgage lenders, institutional investors, underwriters, attorneys, and regulators.

This book begins with a brief history of reverse mortgages, and quickly moves on to discuss how the industry has evolved-detailing the players in these markets as well as the process. It discusses the securitization of reverse mortgages and other linked securities and includes coverage of pricing techniques and risk mitigation. This reliable resource also takes the time to cover the current regulatory environment of the HECM market, which is constantly changing due to the current state of the real estate market.Highlights specific strategies that will allow institutional investors to benefit from the resurgence of reverse mortgages and linked securities""One of the only guides to reverse mortgages and linked securities targeted towards institutional investors interested in securitized products

If you want to make the most of reverse mortgages and linked securities, take the time to read this book.

Credit Intelligence and Modelling provides an indispensable explanation of the statistical models and methods used when assessing credit risk and automating decisions. Over eight modules, the book covers consumer and business lending in both the developed and developing worlds, providing the frameworks for both theory and practice. It first explores an introduction to credit risk assessment and predictive modelling, micro-histories of credit and credit scoring, as well as the processes used throughout the credit risk management cycle. Mathematical and statistical tools used to develop and assess predictive models are then considered, in addition to project management and data assembly, data preparation from sampling to reject inference, and finally model training through to implementation. Although the focus is credit risk, especially in the retail consumer and small-business segments, many concepts are common across disciplines, whether for academic research or practical use. The book assumes little prior knowledge, thus making it an indispensable desktop reference for students and practitioners alike. Credit Intelligence and Modelling expands on the success of The Credit Scoring Toolkit to cover credit rating and intelligence agencies, and the data and tools used as part of the process.

This book is an introductory guide to using Levy processes for credit risk modelling. It covers all types of credit derivatives: from the single name vanillas such as Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) right through to structured credit risk products such as Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurances (CPPIs) and Constant Proportion Debt Obligations (CPDOs) as well as new advanced rating models for Asset Backed Securities (ABSs). Jumps and extreme events are crucial stylized features, essential in the modelling of the very volatile credit markets - the recent turmoil in the credit markets has once again illustrated the need for more refined models. Readers will learn how the classical models (driven by Brownian motions and Black-Scholes settings) can be significantly improved by using the more flexible class of Levy processes. By doing this, extreme event and jumps can be introduced into the models to give more reliable pricing and a better assessment of the risks. The book brings in high-tech financial engineering models for the detailed modelling of credit risk instruments, setting up the theoretical framework behind the application of Levy Processes to Credit Risk Modelling before moving on to the practical implementation. Complex credit derivatives structures such as CDOs, ABSs, CPPIs, CPDOs are analysed and illustrated with market data.