Contemporary research in the field of time-based currency has generally been unstructured and takes a retrospective point of view. In practice, approaches to this field commonly taken until now have shown that there can be as many points of view as there are researchers. Time Bank as a Complementary Economic System: Emerging Research and Opportunities provides a systemic study of a soft system called the Time Bank, a reciprocal service exchange that uses units of time as currency. This publication explores the contemporary context of Time Bank and describes the most recent research methodologies and results. Its content represents the work of business exchange, knowledge management, and soft systems, and it is designed for economists, managers, business professionals, social scientists, academicians, and researchers seeking coverage on topics centered on soft systems and their economic influence.

Whether you are an executive or a student, beginner or expert, this book is designed to explain and illustrate the working essentials of finance with clarity and speed. This desktop companion deliberately combines essential theory with real-world application, using short, focused chapters to help you find what you need and implement it right away. www.pearsoned.co.uk/estrada

Double Standards travels 25 years back to explore the story of a bank, with roots in the Middle East, that rose to prominence and became the fastest-growing bank in the world. It was called the Bank of Credit & Commerce International, known as BCCI, and became the 4th largest bank in the world by 1991. It became the bridge between the Third World and the West and at its height was bailing out governments in developing countries, like the IMF or World Bank. It was also a favourite port of call for some more notorious clientele, like the CIA, who used the bank to facilitate its covert operations overseas. The Bank of England and US authorities shut the BCCI down amidst allegations of fraud in July 1991, making over 14,000 employees redundant and leaving over 1 million customers out of pocket. Double Standards revisits the actions taken by the Bank of England and the regulatory authorities with regards to BCCI and carries out an academic analysis to compare its treatment with the major banking scandals following the global financial meltdown in 2008. The malpractice that BCCI was accused of was on par with a parking violation compared to the actions of the bigger banks of today, yet the fines and penalties to these banks are not as severe as the punishment meted out to BCCI. Why was the bank shut and, more importantly, who benefitted from its closure? This informative analysis of BCCI's rise and fall will appeal to those with an interest in finance and banking law.

Investing for a Lifetime is designed to make saving and investing understandable to the investor. Wharton Professor Richard C. Marston, 2014 recipient of the Investment Management Consultants Association s prestigious Matthew R. McArthur Award, guides an investor through the main investment decisions throughout a lifetime. Investing for a Lifetime shows: * how younger investors can set savings goals * how both younger and older investors can choose investment portfolios to achieve these goals * how investors can sustain spending once reaching retirement. Younger and older investors alike should understand savings goals that will provide enough income to sustain spending in retirement. They should devise rates of saving that allow them to reach their goals by the time of retirement. Though retirement is often the main goal of investing, it s not the only one. Marston discusses how funding a child s education or saving for a down payment for a home affects overall saving. Sensible investing is also necessary for savings goals to be realized. Investing need not be complicated, but Marston explains that a diversified portfolio should include a mix of different types of U.S. stocks, foreign stocks, real estate as well as bonds. He describes each of these asset classes and shows how they fit in an investor s portfolio. He shows how investors can monitor the performance of their portfolios by establishing benchmarks for each asset class to judge how well their investments are doing. He focuses particular attention on those investors nearing retirement. In today s low interest rate environment, he discusses whether it is possible to fund retirement from interest and dividends alone. He shows how savings combined with Social Security can fund retirement spending. And he asks how the New Normal of lower returns might force investors to save more than in past decades, and to spend less in retirement than in the past. Investing for a Lifetime is for investors who want to understand more about the savings and investment process, particularly those who worry about whether their retirement savings will last a lifetime.

This book is a one-stop-shop reference for risk management practitioners involved in the validation of risk models. It is a comprehensive manual about the tools, techniques and processes to be followed, focused on all the models that are relevant in the capital requirements and supervisory review of large international banks.

Bank Risk Management in Developing Economies: Addressing the Unique Challenges of Domestic Banks provides an up-to-date resource on how domestically-based banks in emerging economies can provide financial services for all economic sectors while also contributing to national economic development policies. Because these types of bank are often exposed to risky sectors, they are usually set apart from foreign subsidiaries, and thus need risk models that foreign-based banks do not address. This book is the first to identify these needs, proposing solutions through the use of case studies and analyses that illustrate how developing economic banking crises are often rooted in managing composite risks. The book represents a departure from classical literature that focuses on assets, liabilities, and balance sheet management, by which developing economy banks, like their counterparts elsewhere, have not fared well.

FinTech is encouraging various new practices, such as diminishing the use of cash in different countries, increasing rate of mobile payments, and introducing new algorithms for high-frequency trading across national boundaries. It is paving the way for new technologies emerging in the information technology scene that allow financial service firms to automate existing business processes and offer new products, including crowdfunding or peer-to-peer insurance. These new products cater to hybrid client interaction and customer self-services, changing the ecosystem by increasing outsourcing for focused specialization by resizing and leading to new ecosystems and new regulations for encouraging FinTech. However, such new ecosystems are also accompanied by new challenges. Innovative Strategies for Implementing FinTech in Banking provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of technology inclusion in the financial sector and applications within global financing. It provides a clear direction for the effective implementation of FinTech initiatives/programs for improving banking financial processes, financial organizational learning, and performance excellence. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as artificial intelligence, social financing, and customer satisfaction, this book encourages the management of the financial industry to take a proactive attitude toward FinTech, resulting in a better decision-making capability that will support financial organizations in their journey towards becoming FinTech-based organizations. As such, this book is ideally designed for financial analysts, finance managers, finance administrators, banking professionals, IT consultants, researchers, academics, students, and practitio

Efficiency and Competition in Chinese Banking gives a comprehensive analysis of the industry, including cost, technical, profit, and revenue efficiency. The Chinese banking industry is of global importance. The book estimates the competitive condition of the sector using the Boone indicator, Panzar-Rosse Histatistic, Lerner index, and concentration ratio. The author investigates the impact of competition on efficiency in Chinese banking while controlling for comprehensive determinants of bank efficiency. This title complements Yong Tan's previous book, Performance, Risk, and Competition in the Chinese Banking Sector, also published by Chandos.

Computational Finance Using C and C#: Derivatives and Valuation, Second Edition provides derivatives pricing information for equity derivatives, interest rate derivatives, foreign exchange derivatives, and credit derivatives. By providing free access to code from a variety of computer languages, such as Visual Basic/Excel, C++, C, and C#, it gives readers stand-alone examples that they can explore before delving into creating their own applications. It is written for readers with backgrounds in basic calculus, linear algebra, and probability. Strong on mathematical theory, this second edition helps empower readers to solve their own problems. *Features new programming problems, examples, and exercises for each chapter. *Includes freely-accessible source code in languages such as C, C++, VBA, C#, and Excel.. *Includes a new chapter on the history of finance which also covers the 2008 credit crisis and the use of mortgage backed securities, CDSs and CDOs. *Emphasizes mathematical theory.