The bestselling classic from the "Sherlock Holmes of Accounting"-updated to reflect the key case studies and most important lessons from the past quarter century. This fourth edition of the classic guide shines a light on the most shocking frauds and financial reporting offenders of the last twenty-five years, and gives investors the tools they need to detect: *Corporate cultures that incentivize dishonest practices*The latest tricks companies use to exaggerate revenue and earnings*Techniques devised by management to manipulate cash flow as easily as earnings*Companies that use misleading metrics to fool investors about their financial performance*How companies use acquisitions to hide deterioration in their underlying business This new edition focuses on the key case studies and most important lessons from the past quarter century, and brings you up to date on accounting chicanery in the global markets. Howard Schilit and his team of renowned forensic accounting experts expose financial reporting miscreants and unveil the latest methods companies use to mislead investors. You'll learn everything you need to know to unearth deceptive reporting and avoid costly mistakes.

Written by one of North America's foremost authorities on the subject, this is the first sustained treatment of the complex relationship between real interest rates and investment returns. Spiro focuses specifically on the problems of measuring and predicting real interest rates in order to optimize corporate investment and borrowing strategy. The book provides a wealth of practical advice in such key areas as choosing types of investment instruments, selecting the best term to maturity, and assessing the risks versus rewards of different types of bond instruments. Considering the complex subject, the book is surprisingly well written. Corporate financial officers, in particular, will want to read it. "Journal of Accountancy"

Written by one of North America's foremost authorities on the subject, this is the first sustained treatment of the complex relationship between real interest rates and investment returns. The author focuses specifically on the problems of measuring and predicting real interest rates in order to optimize corporate investment and borrowing strategy. An invaluable decisionmaking tool for financial officers, treasurers, and portfolio managers, the book is written in clear, non-technical language and provides a wealth of practical advice in such key areas as choosing types of investment instruments, selecting the best term to maturity, and assessing the risks versus rewards of different types of bond instruments.

Spiro bases his book on rigorous empirical research and relates new findings in financial economics to the on-the-job problems and uncertainties faced by corporate investment managers. He highlights research which indicates that even moderate rates of inflation can have a substantial negative effect on the real interest rate and provides detailed empirical estimates to help the reader predict the value of the real interest rate under varying conditions. Additional topics covered include the impact of real interest rate changes on stock prices, the effects of exchange rate risk on international fixed income investment and borrowing, and the effects of government debts and deficits on real interest rates. Taken together, the information offered here will enhance the financial professional's ability to predict important interest rate trends and therefore increase the quality of their investment and financial decisions.

Acclaim for Joel Greenblatt's New York Times bestseller THE LITTLE BOOK THAT BEATS THE MARKET "One of the best, clearest guides to value investing out there." Wall Street Journal "Simply perfect. One of the most important investment books of the last fifty years!" Michael Price "A landmark book-a stunningly simple and low-risk way to significantly beat the market!" Michael Steinhardt, the dean of Wall Street hedge-fund managers "The best book on the subject in years." Financial Times "The best thing about this book-from which I intend to steal liberally for the next edition of The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need-is that most people won't believe it...That's good, because the more people who know about a good thing, the more expensive that thing ordinarily becomes..." Andrew Tobias, author of The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need "This book is the finest simple distillation of modern value investing principles ever written. It should be mandatory reading for all serious investors from the fourth grade on up." Professor Bruce Greenwald, director of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham and Dodd Investing, Columbia Business School

Fischer Black was a remarkable social scientist, one whose contributions range from the lofty perch of highbrow theory to the trenches of practical application. The papers represented in this work span the same range, the contributions of a remarkable array of financial economists who embody in different ways Fischer's ideal of insight from economic theory that both guides and is rooted in the kind of detailed observation of relevant aspects of actual financial markets. It is hoped that readers find this volume to be both a fitting tribute and a stimulus to further research. After all, the advancement of economic science remained a constant goal throughout Fischer's remarkable career in the many and disparate venues in which he plies his trade.

The role of asymmetric information in allocation of resources, together with the associated information-revelation process, has long been a central focus of economic research. While the bulk of the literature addresses these is sues within the framework of principal-agent relationship, which essentially reduces the problem to the sole principal's (the sole Stackelberg leader's) optimization problem subject to the agents' (the Stackelberg followers') re sponses, there are recent attempts to extend analysis to other economic setups characterized by different relationships among decision-makers. A notable strand of such attempts is the core analysis of incomplete in formation. Here, there is no Stackelberg-type relationship, and more impor tantly the players can talk to each other for coordinated choice of strategies. See, e.g., Wilson (1978) for a pioneering work; Yannelis (1991) for formula tion of feasibility of a strategy as its measurability; Ichiishi and Idzik (1996) for introduction of Bayesian incentive-compatibility to this strand; Ichiishi, Idzik and Zhao (1994) for information revelation (that is, endogenous deter mination of updated information structures); Ichiishi and Radner (1997) and Ichiishi and Sertel (1998) for studies of a specific model of Chandler's firm in multidivisional form for sharper results; and Vohra (1999) for a recent work. It is a common postulate in these works that every player takes part in design of a mechanism and also in execution of the signed contract."

This important book presents a new original study of the German and UK financial markets. It addresses the relationship between corporate governance, ownership and financial performance in German and UK firms floated during the 1980s. Marc Goergen uses detailed company micro-data to examine the ownership and performance of each firm from the time of its flotation to six years later. He finds that the evolution of ownership depends on certain corporate characteristics and that differences in financial performance cannot be explained simply by differences in the concentration of ownership. The book sheds new light on the important issue of whether corporate ownership influences or is influenced by financial performance. The main findings of the book have important implications for public policy and the current public debate on corporate governance and the globalisation of financial markets. They are important for established financial markets and the transitional economies of Eastern and Central Europe as well as for international scholars interested in issues of corporate governance and the performance of firms.

This 32 volume set reissues key out-of-print titles that will prove invaluable in understanding the current resurgence of economic nationalism. Covering all aspects of international trade policy, and focusing particularly on tariffs and protectionism, this set will be invaluable to the modern student.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate both skewness and kurtosis explicitly through extending Zhang (1994) to provide bounds for the prices of and expected payoffs for options, given the first two moments of skewness and kurtosis. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II - distributions of terminal stock prices with given expected prices, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis under the assumption that the underlying asset price is continuously distributed. Similar to the results given in (1), the bounds derived in this paper depend on the information of the cumulative distribution of the underlying asset. However, it is shown in Section II that for each set of moments, there always exists one semi-parametric upper bound which is independent of the information of any distribution of the underlying asset. This semi-parametric upper bound has the same property as that in the case of the first two moments in Zhang (1994), that is, it is always greater than, or equal to, the distribution dependent bounds.

This book is a thorough, balanced, and insightful study of what is happening and what should be happening in health care financing. Americans want unlimited access to the best care at affordable prices. Fiscal pressures in American health care point in all different directions, like a pile of jackstraws. This important book analyzes how new payment incentives stimulate planned competition or reregulation; and the far-reaching impact these changes have on hospitals, physicians, long-term care facilities, HMOs, public health clinics, and multihospital systems. Tools for survival include better financial planning, productivity improvement, better scheduling systems, and total quality management.

Steven R. Eastaugh begins his book with a general overview of cost management, accounting, product-line selection, and new payment incentives. Part II provides an in-depth survey of fiscal trends in long-term care, managed care, HMOs, and PPOs. Part III analyzes five basic strategies that a provider may consider; with special focus on market analysis, diversification, and pricing. The next part reviews physician payment options, the new Medicare 1992 payment systems for hospitals and physicians, and cost analysis of hospital patient care, research, and education. Part V considers productivity enhancement methods, incentives to assist productivity programs, and the Deming method of total quality management. Part VI focuses on investment, financing, and capital structure decisions in health care institutions and also in large multifacility systems. The last part summarizes major strategies for success in the 1990s, future policy alternatives, and suggests a number of alternative roads to universal entitlement and national health care reform. As Eastaugh suggests in this book, Our health system faces . . . immense opportunity and danger in a reformation on four fronts: access, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of life. The challenge for providers and managers during this period of unparalleled opportunity is to win a clear victory on all four fronts, and not erode either access or quality in the name of efficiency. The range of coverage in Health Care Finance is extremely wide and detailed--making it essential and useful reading for health care professionals and students alike.

Credit Risk Pricing Models - now in its second edition - gives a deep insight into the latest basic and advanced credit risk modelling techniques covering not only the standard structural, reduced form and hybrid approaches but also showing how these methods can be applied to practice. The text covers a broad range of financial instruments, including all kinds of defaultable fixed and floating rate debt, credit derivatives and collateralised debt obligations.This volume will be a valuable source for the financial community involved in pricing credit linked financial instruments. In addition, the book can be used by students and academics for a comprehensive overview of the most important credit risk modelling issues.

Praise for "Praise for Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics"

"A highly accessible collection of essays on contemporary thinking in performance management. Readers will get excellent overviews on the Balanced Scorecard, strategy maps, incentives, management accounting, activity-based costing, customer lifetime value, and sustainable shareholder value creation."
--Robert S. Kaplan, Harvard Business School; coauthor of "The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action, The Execution Premium," and many other books

"Gary Cokins demonstrates in this book that performance management is not a mysterious black art, but a structured, process-oriented discipline. If you want your performance management system to be a smoothly running analytical machine, read and apply the ideas in this book--it's all you need."
--Thomas H. Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management, Babson College; coauthor of "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning"

"Drawing on a deep reservoir of knowledge and experience gained from hundreds of customer engagements around the world, Gary Cokins offers an authoritative examination of the major dimensions of performance management. Cokins not only paints a rich and textured view of the major principles and concepts driving performance management implementations, he offers a nuanced look at the important subtleties that can spell the difference between success and failure. This is an informative and enjoyable text to read "
--Wayne Eckerson, Director of Research, The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI); author of "Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business"

" In this] very insightful book, the view of an integrated performance management framework with a goal to link various operational activities with business strategy is an excellent approach to manage and improve business. Gary's explanation of risk-based performance management, for providing the capability to achieve long-term objectives with reliably calculated risks, is definitely thought provoking."
--Srini Pallia, Global Head and Vice President of Business Technology Services, Wipro Technologies, Bangalore, India

"Gary Cokins is clearly one of the world's thought leaders in the area of performance management, and the need for integrated performance management, improvement and execution is clearly at a premium in these challenging economic times. This book is a must read for CEOs, CFOs, and management accountants around the globe seeking higher levels of sustainable business performance for their stakeholders."
--Jeffrey C. Thomson, President and CEO, Institute of Management Accountants

Money and Macroeconomics is a significant collection of David Laidler's most important papers on the so-called 'monetarist counter-revolution'. This volume contains both published and unpublished examples of his influential contribution, detailing empirical work on the demand for money, the economics of inflation, the foundations of the 'buffer stock' approach to monetary theory, the monetarist critique of new classical economics and issues of economic policy.David Laidler has also prepared a personal memoir to accompany his volume which gives a revealing account of his academic career and influences, and places each essay in its original intellectual context. Money and Macroeconomics presents in one volume David Laidler's most important contributions to monetary economics. It will be invaluable to monetary and financial economists as well as policy makers and historians of economic thought.

U.S. firms doing business in Germany are succeeding far better than usually reported. Indeed, 14 of the top 1,700 American companies with direct investment in Germany placed among the top 100 German industrial firms in sales in 1994, a fact that made big news in Germany but was never mentioned in the U.S. press. Here now, in one succinct, readable volume, is all of the vital information that American companies, and companies elsewhere, will need to enter and succeed in this lucrative German market. Certainly there are drawbacks, but attorneys James A. Hart and Dieter Schultze-Zeu make clear there are significant advantages as well, and in certain important ways it may be even easier to do business there than in other major industrial countries such as Japan.

The authors look carefully at the scope of U.S.-German business, and then compare the three economic superpowers -- Germany, Japan, and the United States -- in terms of such variables as gross domestic product, economic growth, and industrial production. They review the political, economic, and social considerations that have emerged from the unification of West and East Germany, and show their effects on the ways in which business in Germany is now done. They examine the principle methods of selling to Germany, the impact of the German government and legal system on American businesses. Then they discuss in detail specifics such as the legal forms of business, Germany's accounting and tax laws, and laws relating to product liability, anti-trust, labor, and social security. Also covered are the German banking and accounting systems, stock markets, and the presence of U.S. commercial banks in Germany. Of special interest are case histories of several important U.S. companies doing business there. An exceptionally useful guide for corporate executives, attorneys, and a cogent introduction to the German business environment for students, researchers, and analysts in the academic community.

Who enjoys statutory preferred creditor status? What justifications exist for jurisdictions to maintain statutes that favour 'priority' creditors over other creditors and contributories? This book examines preferential debts derived from specific legislative provisions applying to corporate insolvency. In exploring the concept of preferential treatment, Statutory Priorities in Corporate Insolvency Law includes chapters that provide a doctrinal, theoretical and historical analysis of who enjoys preferred creditor status. As well as examining the traditional major categories of priorities, this work also identifies potential new categories for priority status such as environmental clean-up costs, international creditors, tort claimants and consumers among other non-consensual creditors. While the study focuses on Australian corporate insolvency law, where appropriate, comparisons are made with other common law jurisdictions, particularly the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the US.

Using examples from finance and modern warfare to the flocking of birds and the swarming of bacteria, the collected research in this volume demonstrates the common methodological approaches and tools for modeling and simulating collective behavior.

Thetopics presented point toward new and challenging frontiers of applied mathematics, making the volume a useful referencetext forapplied mathematicians, physicists, biologists, and economists involved in the modeling of socio-economic systems."

A fieldwork-based sociological study of how participants in City of London financial markets view the markets in which they work and the market mechanism in general. It is more than a narrow study of financial market participants because it is also an empirical investigation into how ideologies function and it develops a critique of pro-market ideologies such as "Thatcherism". Finally, it is a sociological study into the privileged world of high earners and the wealthy.

The 1990s saw a rapid rise in the proportion of market value represented by Internet companies. At the peak of the market, the value of US internet stocks alone exceeded $2 trillion, making these stocks nearly as valuable as the entire UK market. However, since March 2000 many internet stock values have declined precipitately. This book establishes a robust cashflow based methodology for internet valuation in relation to strategic issues, and includes compelling and topical case studies of leading players including Amazon.com and NTT DoCoMo.

This book introduces readers to the basic concepts of and latest findings in the area of differential equations with uncertain factors. It covers the analytic method and numerical method for solving uncertain differential equations, as well as their applications in the field of finance. Furthermore, the book provides a number of new potential research directions for uncertain differential equation. It will be of interest to researchers, engineers and students in the fields of mathematics, information science, operations research, industrial engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence, automation, economics, and management science.

The book discusses the mechanisms by which securities are traded, as well as examining economic models of asymmetric information, inventory control, and cost-minimizing trading strategies.

This book is useful, readable and intelligent survey of the emerging field of behavioral accounting, a field that is doing much to narrow the gap between accounting and behavioral scholars and practitioners.

"Personnel Psychology"

The relatively new field of behavioral accounting relies on the application of behavioral concepts from the social sciences for an understanding of the forces that underlie the accounting environment. Here, Belkaoui presents the first comprehensive survey of behavioral accounting theories and findings, organizing them into a systematic framework for the further study of behavioral accounting issues and questions. The result is a new understanding of the behavioral environment of accounting and a guide to solving practical behavioral problems that result from the preparation and use of accounting information.

As Belkaoui demonstrates, the quality of accounting information is often adversely affected by human perceptions, attitudes, predispositions, and other behavioral characteristics. Belkaoui fully explores the behavioral underpinnings of the problem by examining the behavioral dimensions of a wide range of accounting issues and practices including: contingency approaches to the design of accounting systems; functional and data fixation; the practice of slack; accounting and language; goal setting, participative budgeting and performance; the human resource considerations in public accounting firms; and, finally, cultural determinism in accounting. By offering both a realistic appraisal of the theories behind behavioral accounting and a cogent statement of the questions still left unanswered, Belkaoui makes a major contribution to the ongoing inquiry into the influence of behavioral factors on accounting practice.

Bonds are a vital part of the global capital markets and are essential for any investor's portfolio. In this book leading expert Moorad Choudhry demystifies bonds once and for all. This guide explains, in a simple, clear fashion, the importance of bonds and why all private investors should include them as part of their investment strategy. Many bonds offer secure returns at a lower risk than equities. Readers will gain insight into the advantages of holding bonds and why they should always form part of any savings portfolio. Covering, among other topics, government bonds, the yield curve and what drives the market, in an easy, accessible style, this book is a must for anyone who wants to adopt a sound investment strategy.

This textbook gives a comprehensive introduction to stochastic processes and calculus in the fields of finance and economics, more specifically mathematical finance and time series econometrics. Over the past decades stochastic calculus and processes have gained great importance, because they play a decisive role in the modeling of financial markets and as a basis for modern time series econometrics. Mathematical theory is applied to solve stochastic differential equations and to derive limiting results for statistical inference on nonstationary processes. This introduction is elementary and rigorous at the same time. On the one hand it gives a basic and illustrative presentation of the relevant topics without using many technical derivations. On the other hand many of the procedures are presented at a technically advanced level: for a thorough understanding, they are to be proven. In order to meet both requirements jointly, the present book is equipped with a lot of challenging problems at the end of each chapter as well as with the corresponding detailed solutions. Thus the virtual text - augmented with more than 60 basic examples and 40 illustrative figures - is rather easy to read while a part of the technical arguments is transferred to the exercise problems and their solutions.