In the last decade rating-based models have become very popular in credit risk management. These systems use the rating of a company as the decisive variable to evaluate the default risk of a bond or loan. The popularity is due to the straightforwardness of the approach, and to the upcoming new capital accord (Basel II), which allows banks to base their capital requirements on internal as well as external rating systems. Because of this, sophisticated credit risk models are being developed or demanded by banks to assess the risk of their credit portfolio better by recognizing the different underlying sources of risk. As a consequence, not only default probabilities for certain rating categories but also the probabilities of moving from one rating state to another are important issues in such models for risk management and pricing.
It is widely accepted that rating migrations and default probabilities show significant variations through time due to macroeconomics conditions or the business cycle. These changes in migration behavior may have a substantial impact on the value-at-risk (VAR) of a credit portfolio or the prices of credit derivatives such as collateralized debt obligations (D+CDOs). In this book the authors develop a much more sophisticated analysis of migration behavior. Their contribution of more sophisticated techniques to measure and forecast changes in migration behavior as well as determining adequate estimators for transition matrices is a major contribution to rating based credit modeling.
*Internal ratings-based systems are widely used in banks to calculate their value-at-risk (VAR) in order to determine their capital requirements for loan and bond portfolios under Basel II
*One aspect of these ratings systems is credit migrations, addressed in a systematic and comprehensive way for the first time in this book
*The book is based on in-depth work by Trueck and Rachev,

The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones. We rarely stop to consider where they have come from. But we should.

The World for Sale lifts the lid on one of the least scrutinized corners of the world economy: the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard, and sell the earth's resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets, enabling an enormous expansion in international trade and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centers.

The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.

Capital Market Integration in South Asia: Realizing the SAARC Opportunity discusses the potential Capital Market Products/Activities which can create closer inter-linkage of the South Asian capital markets and help local/global investors benefit from this economic opportunity. While some ideas may be implementable now; others have future promise as the regional markets further mature. The book demonstrates both retail and institutional investor interest in this combined high-growth region by offering scope for yield, diversification and risk mitigation, maximized upside from multiple growth markets, minimized downside through low-correlation constituents, and more. The book's core theme addresses the challenges towards deepening the awareness and acceptability of regional economies. Only when this happens will the asset flows increase into the regional market products, providing scale-up that will aid viability for these products.

This book brings together the latest concepts and models in real-estate derivatives, the new frontier in financial markets. The importance of real-estate derivatives in managing property price risk that has destabilized economies frequently over the last hundred years has been brought into the limelight by Robert Shiller. In spite of his masterful campaign for the introduction of real-estate derivatives, these financial instruments are still in a state of infancy. This book aims to provide a state-of-the-art overview of real-estate derivatives, covering the description of these financial products, their applications, and the most important models proposed in the literature. In order to facilitate a better understanding of the situations when these products can be successfully used, ancillary topics such as real-estate indices, mortgages, securitization, and equity release mortgages are also discussed. The book examines econometric aspects of real-estate index prices time series and financial engineering non-arbitrage principles governing the pricing of derivatives. The emphasis is on understanding the financial instruments through their mechanics and comparative description. The examples are based on real-world data from exchanges or from major investment banks or financial houses in London. The numerical analysis is easily replicable with Excel and Matlab.

Legendary lawyer of the people, Louis Brandeis, displays his knowledge of the banking financial system and describes how it asserts staggering control over the economy of the United States. As relevant today as it was when first published in 1914, this book serves to demystify aspects of the banking system which are lost on those who are not employed within the finance sector. Explaining how banks have become a powerful oligarchy, Brandeis describes how the money trusts hold enormous and growing influence upon almost every large industry in the United States and much of the wider world. The monopolies of money trusts, and their role in controlling the economy, is described in detail. The deposits and savings of millions of ordinary Americans are put to work by the likes of J. P. Morgan who both lend to and purchase other banks and parts of companies. The trend towards small banks combining into larger entities, and the anti-competitive monopolies this entails are detailed.