The 2008 financial crisis and its subsequent economic impacts generated a challenge for national and regional governments across the world. From this economic ruin, the Social Impact Bond (SIB) was born as an alternative mechanism for government procurement and delivery of social public services. Social Service, Private Gain examines the evolution of SIBs, how they work, their theoretical motivation, and their global proliferation. The book critically assesses the potential of SIBs to constructively contribute to solving the multifaceted social challenges emerging from a context of entrenched and growing inequality. Claiming to bring incremental resources to the rescue, SIBs have taken up disproportionate space with new legislation, policy, subsidies, institutional supports, lobbyists, and "intermediaries" facilitating SIBs and thriving on their associated transaction costs. Drawing on mainstream and heterodox economic theory, practical case studies, and empirical data, Jesse Hajer and John Loxley generate new insights based on the limited but still suggestive publicly available data on SIB projects. Challenging the assumptions and narratives put forward by proponents of the model, they offer practical policy recommendations for SIBs and explain what the model tells us about the potential for transformational change for the better.

The field of credit risk and corporate bankruptcy prediction has gained considerable momentum following the collapse of many large corporations around the world, and more recently through the sub-prime scandal in the United States. This book provides a thorough compendium of the different modelling approaches available in the field, including several new techniques that extend the horizons of future research and practice. Topics covered include probit models (in particular bivariate probit modelling), advanced logistic regression models (in particular mixed logit, nested logit and latent class models), survival analysis models, non-parametric techniques (particularly neural networks and recursive partitioning models), structural models and reduced form (intensity) modelling. Models and techniques are illustrated with empirical examples and are accompanied by a careful explanation of model derivation issues. This practical and empirically-based approach makes the book an ideal resource for all those concerned with credit risk and corporate bankruptcy, including academics, practitioners and regulators.

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.

Microcredit programmes, long considered efficient development tools, now face unprecedented crises in a number of countries. Is this the end of microcredit or rather an essential step in its expansion? Should we stop microcredit altogether or rethink the way it is implemented? Drawing on extensive empirical research conducted in various parts of the world - from Morocco to Senegal to India - this important volume examines the whole chain of microcredit to provide the answers to these questions. In doing so, the authors highlight the diversity of crises, both in intensity and in nature, while also shedding light on a diversity of causes, be it microcredit organizations unprepared for massive growth, saturated local economies or greedy investors and shareholders attracted by profits. Crucially, the authors demonstrate that microcredit is not a monolithic project, and the crises should also be analysed in the light of national histories and policies. An original and necessary intervention in what has become one of the most contentious topics within the development world.

In "Introduction to Mortgages & Mortgage Backed Securities, " author Richard Green combines current practices in real estate capital markets with financial theory so readers can make intelligent business decisions. After a behavioral economics chapter on the nature of real estate decisions, he explores mortgage products, processes, derivatives, and international practices. By focusing on debt, his book presents a different view of the mortgage market than is commonly available, and his primer on fixed-income tools and concepts ensures that readers understand the rich content he covers. Including commercial and residential real estate, this book explains how the markets work, why they collapsed in 2008, and what countries are doing to protect themselves from future bubbles. Green's expertise illuminates both the fundamentals of mortgage analysis and the international paradigms of products, models, and regulatory environments.
Written for buyers of real estate, not mortgage lenders Balances theory with increasingly complex practices of commercial and residential mortgage lendingEmphasizes international practices, changes caused by the 2008-11 financial crisis, and the behavioral aspects of mortgage decision making

"The Independence of Credit Rating Agencies" focuses on the institutional and regulatory dynamics of these agencies, asking whether their business models give them enough independence to make viable judgments without risking their own profitability.

Few have closely examined the analytical methods of credit rating agencies, even though their decisions can move markets, open or close the doors to capital, and bring down governments. The 2008 financial crisis highlighted their importance and their shortcomings, especially when they misjudged the structured financial products that precipitated the collapse of Bear Stearns and other companies.

This book examines the roles played by rating agencies during the financial crisis, illuminating the differences between U.S. and European rating markets, and also considers subjects such as the history of rating agencies and the roles played by smaller agencies to present a well-rounded portrait.
Reports on one of the key causes of the 2008 financial crisis: agencies that failed to understand how to analyze financial productsDescribes inherent business model and pricing conflicts that compromise the independence of credit rating agenciesReveals how rating agencies large and small, regulatory bodies, and vested interests interact in setting fees and policies

A breakthrough methodology for profiting in the high-yield and distressed debt market

Global advances in technology give investors and asset managers more information at their fingertips than ever before. With "Quantitative Analytics in Debt Valuation and Management," you can join the elite club of quantitative investors who know how to use that information to beat the market and their competitors.

This powerful guide shows you how to sharpen your analytical process by considering valuable information hidden in the prices of related assets. "Quantitative Analytics in Debt Valuation and Management" reveals a progressive framework incorporating debt valuation based on the interrelationships among the equity, bond, and options markets. Using this cutting-edge method in conjunction with traditional debt and equity analysis, you will reduce portfolio risk, find assets with the highest returns, and generate dramatically greater profits from your transactions.

This book's "fat-free" presentation and easy-to-navigate format jump-starts busy professionals on their way to mastering proven techniques to: Determine the "equity risk" inherent in corporate debt to establish the causal relationship between a company's debt, equity, and asset values Price and analyze corporate debt in real time by going beyond traditional methods for computing capital requirements and anticipated losses Look with an insider's eye at risk management challenges facing banks, hedge funds, and other institutions operating with financial leverage Avoid the mistakes of other investors who contribute to the systemic risk in the financial system

Additionally, you will be well prepared for the real world with the book's focus on practical application and clear case studies. Step-by-step, you will see how to improve bond pricing and hedge debt with equity, and how selected investment management strategies perform when the model is used to drive decision making.

This monograph is practically oriented, presenting a survey and explanation of credit insurance services for protection of short-term trade receivables primarily against commercial risk of insolvency and protracted default. The subject matter (i.e., main functions, features and principles of credit insurance with detailed description of credit insurance coverage, insurance conditions, and credit insurance policy management) follows procedural stages and presents commercial, financial, legal, and practical points of view which emphasize the needs of both the providers of these services andtheir clients - existing and potential credit insured companies - as well asother practitioners.
Explains how credit insurance has changed from an esoteric type of property insurance into a flexible and frequently used credit risk mitigation tool used on a global basisCompares credit insurance with self-insurance and equivalent substitutesDescribes the types of insurance available and how to obtain and manage credit insurance policies"

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

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.

Few sectors of the global economy have experienced the dynamic and structural change that has occurred over the past several decades in banking and financial services or as much turbulence and damage to the economy and to ordinary people. Regulatory and technological changes have been among the main catalysts of change in the financial industry worldwide, making entrenched competitive structures obsolete and mandating the development of new products, new processes, new strategies, and new public policies toward the industry.
This third edition of Global Banking reassess the continuing transformational process of global banking and finance--its causes, its course, and its consequences. It begins with an overview of the most recent developments and goes on to examine the major dimensions of international commercial and investment banking, including money and foreign exchange markets, debt capital markets, international bank lending, derivatives, asset-based and project financing, and equity capital markets. Later, the various advisory businesses--mergers and acquisitions, privatizations, institutional asset management, and private banking--are analyzed. In each case, the factors that distinguish the winners from the losers are identified. This is brought together in the final section of the book, which deals with problems of strategic positioning and execution, as well as critical risk issues and regulations.

The book develops an economic framework for assessing different cooperative payment schemes.

Annuity insurance products help protect retirees against outliving their incomes. Dramatic advances in life expectancy mean that today's retirees must plan on living into their eighties, their nineties, and even beyond. Longer life expectancies are the symbol of a prosperous society, but this progress also means that some retirees will need to plan conservatively and cut back substantially on their living standards or risk living so long that they exhaust their resources. This book examines the role that life annuities can play in helping people protect themselves against such outcomes. A life annuity is an insurance product that pays out a periodic amount for as long as the annuitant is alive, in exchange for a premium. The book begins with a history of life annuity markets during the twentieth century in the United States and elsewhere. It then explores recent trends in annuity pricing and money's worth, as well as the economic value generated for purchasers of these products. The book explains the potential importance of inflation-protected annuities and stock-market-linked variable annuities in providing more complete retirement security. The concluding chapters examine life annuities in various institutional settings and the tax treatment of annuity products.

This volume is an examination of how the credit card industry has changed the way Americans buy, loan, and live. It is part history and part expose of the damaging social and political consequences of America's increasing reliance on credit cards. Using original research and consumer interviews, Manning analyzes the growth of the credit card industry and its related businesses by looking at the story of its consumers - the people who use credit for convenience and those who rely on it for financial stability. In addition to providing a consumer history of credit card usage, Robert Manning analyzes the larger societal attitudes toward debt. The history of the credit card industry's expansion is one of the creation of a new class of consumers who utilize credit and its steep interest and penalty rates for economic survival. Manning discusses the societal toll that the credit card nation is placing on the young, the elderly, and all those in search of the good life marketed by the credit card and banking industries.

In 1982 Johns-Manville, a major asbestos manufacturer, declares itself insolvent to avoid paying claims resulting from exposure to its products. A year later, Continental Airlines, one of the top ten carriers in the United States, claims a deficit when the union resists plans to cut labor costs. Later still, oil powerhouse Texaco cries broke rather than pay damages resulting from a courtroom defeat by archrival Pennzoil. Bankruptcy, once a term that sent shudders up a manager's spine, is now becoming a potent weapon in the corporate arsenal. In his timely and challenging study, Kevin Delaney explores this profound change in our legal landscape, where corporations with billions of dollars in assets use bankruptcy to achieve specific political and organizational objectives. As a consequence, bankruptcy court is rapidly becoming an arena in which crucial social issues are resolved: How and when will people dying of asbestos poisoning be compensated? Can companies unilaterally break legally negotiated labor contracts? What are the ethical and legal rules of the corporate takeover game? In probing the Chapter 11 bankruptcies of Johns-Manville, Frank Lorenzo's Continental Airlines, and Texaco, Delaney shows that more and more, an array of powerful actors--corporations, commercial creditors, auditors, bond rating agencies and investment bankers--are coming to view bankruptcy as a legitimate business strategy. In each situation, the choice of bankruptcy by these corporate giants was directly influenced by the surrounding business community. In the case of Johns-Manville, carrying appropriate insurance did not prevent its twenty insurance companies from refusing to pay claims. Thanks to shrewdplanning and cooperation from Continental's creditors, not only was the airline able to continue flying in the first week of Chapter 11, but it could also offer the lowest cross-country fare in the market. Texaco's banks nudged their client toward bankruptcy as a way to squeeze it into compliance with banking conventions it had previously bypassed. Strategic Bankruptcy uncovers the ways in which bankruptcy has become a biased political system of allocating scarce resources. Delaney's in-depth investigation of three recent bankruptcies and his searing expose of current corporate practices make this book essential reading for corporate executives, lawyers, legislators, and policymakers.

The explosive growth of consumer credit, as well as the shift from cash to "plastic" in societies throughout the world signals a transformation in social relations, which is the focus of this book. For student readers who know the world of credit cards all too well, this is a great way to interest and educate them on the power of thinking sociologically.

A rigorous but practical introduction to the economic, financial, and political principles underlying commodity markets. Commodities have become one of the fastest growing asset classes of the last decade and the object of increasing attention from investors, scholars, and policy makers. Yet existing treatments of the topic are either too theoretical, ignoring practical realities, or largely narrative and nonrigorous. This book bridges the gap, striking a balance between theory and practice. It offers a solid foundation in the economic, financial, and political principles underlying commodities markets. The book, which grows out of courses taught by the author at Columbia and Johns Hopkins, can be used by graduate students in economics, finance, and public policy, or as a conceptual reference for practitioners. After an introduction to basic concepts and a review of the various types of commodities-energy, metals, agricultural products-the book delves into the economic and financial dynamics of commodity markets, with a particular focus on energy. The text covers fundamental demand and supply for resources, the mechanics behind commodity financial markets, and how they motivate investment decisions around both physical and financial portfolio exposure to commodities, and the evolving political and regulatory landscape for commodity markets. Additional special topics include geopolitics, financial regulation, and electricity markets. The book is divided into thematic modules that progress in complexity. Text boxes offer additional, related material, and numerous charts and graphs provide further insight into important concepts.

A new edition of a book presenting a unified framework for studying the role of money and liquid assets in the economy, revised and updated. In Money, Payments, and Liquidity, Guillaume Rocheteau and Ed Nosal provide a comprehensive investigation into the economics of money, liquidity, and payments by explicitly modeling the mechanics of trade and its various frictions (including search, private information, and limited commitment). Adopting the last generation of the New Monetarist framework developed by Ricardo Lagos and Randall Wright, among others, Nosal and Rocheteau provide a dynamic general equilibrium framework to examine the frictions in the economy that make money and liquid assets play a useful role in trade. They discuss such topics as cashless economies; the properties of an asset that make it suitable to be used as a medium of exchange; the optimal monetary policy and the cost of inflation; the coexistence of money and credit; and the relationships among liquidity, asset prices, monetary policy; and the different measures of liquidity in over-the-counter markets. The second edition has been revised to reflect recent progress in the New Monetarist approach to payments and liquidity. Rocheteau and Nosal have added three new chapters: on unemployment and payments, on asset price dynamics and bubbles, and on crashes and recoveries in over-the-counter markets. The chapter on the role of money has been entirely rewritten, adopting a mechanism design approach. Other chapters have been revised and updated, with new material on credit economies under limited commitment, open-market operations and liquidity traps, and the limited pledgeability of assets under informational frictions.

A comprehensive overview of the theory of stochastic processes and its connections to asset pricing, accompanied by some concrete applications. This book presents a self-contained, comprehensive, and yet concise and condensed overview of the theory and methods of probability, integration, stochastic processes, optimal control, and their connections to the principles of asset pricing. The book is broader in scope than other introductory-level graduate texts on the subject, requires fewer prerequisites, and covers the relevant material at greater depth, mainly without rigorous technical proofs. The book brings to an introductory level certain concepts and topics that are usually found in advanced research monographs on stochastic processes and asset pricing, and it attempts to establish greater clarity on the connections between these two fields. The book begins with measure-theoretic probability and integration, and then develops the classical tools of stochastic calculus, including stochastic calculus with jumps and Levy processes. For asset pricing, the book begins with a brief overview of risk preferences and general equilibrium in incomplete finite endowment economies, followed by the classical asset pricing setup in continuous time. The goal is to present a coherent single overview. For example, the text introduces discrete-time martingales as a consequence of market equilibrium considerations and connects them to the stochastic discount factors before offering a general definition. It covers concrete option pricing models (including stochastic volatility, exchange options, and the exercise of American options), Merton's investment-consumption problem, and several other applications. The book includes more than 450 exercises (with detailed hints). Appendixes cover analysis and topology and computer code related to the practical applications discussed in the text.

Credit Data and Scoring: The First Triumph of Big Data and Big Algorithms illuminates the often-hidden practice of predicting an individual's economic responsibility. Written by a leading practitioner, it examines the international implications of US leadership in credit scoring and what other countries have learned from it in building their own systems. Through its comprehensive contemporary perspective, the book also explores how algorithms and big data are driving the future of credit scoring. By revealing a new big picture and data comparisons, it delivers useful insights into legal, regulatory and data manipulation.

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.

The American savings and loan industry began in the 1830s to help people of modest financial means buy a home. Despite the long history of the industry there has been limited scholarly work done on its early years. This collection allows an insight into the place of the savings and loans industry within the wider context of American society.

Recent financial crises have led many economists and policy makers to ask if it is possible to design a financial system that is both efficient and safe. Examining the history of credit and payments in America, this collection looks at the development of a number of institutions that form the basis of today's financial systems. With modern methods of banking under scrutiny, and calls to reduce the role of government and the central bank, the American historical experience can inform decisions about restructuring the financial system for the future. The volumes in this collection are organized thematically and examine the history of key financial institutions before and after the establishment of the Federal Reserve. These cover building and loan associations, provident loan societies, Morris Plan banks, domestic exchanges, non par banking and central banking. Documents come from a variety of archive and periodical sources.

Two top economists outline distinctive approaches to post-crisis financial reform. Over the last few years, the financial sector has experienced its worst crisis since the 1930s. The collapse of major firms, the decline in asset values, the interruption of credit flows, the loss of confidence in firms and credit market instruments, the intervention by governments and central banks: all were extraordinary in scale and scope. In this book, leading economists Randall Kroszner and Robert Shiller discuss what the United States should do to prevent another such financial meltdown. Their discussion goes beyond the nuts and bolts of legislative and regulatory fixes to consider fundamental changes in our financial arrangements. Kroszner and Shiller offer two distinctive approaches to financial reform, with Kroszner providing a systematic analysis of regulatory gaps and Shiller addressing the broader concerns of democratizing and humanizing finance. After brief discussions by four commentators (Benjamin M. Friedman, George G. Kaufman, Robert C. Pozen, and Hal S. Scott), Kroszner and Shiller each offer a response to the other's proposals, creating a fruitful dialogue between two major figures in the field.