A lot of economic problems can be formulated as constrained optimizations and equilibration of their solutions. Various mathematical theories have been supplying economists with indispensable machineries for these problems arising in economic theory. Conversely, mathematicians have been stimulated by various mathematical difficulties raised by economic theories. The series is designed to bring together those mathematicians who are seriously interested in getting new challenging stimuli from economic theories with those economists who seek effective mathematical tools for their researchers. The editorial board of this series comprises the following prominent economists and mathematicians: Managing Editors S. Kusuoka (Univ. Tokyo), T. Maruyama (Keio Univ.); Editors R. Anderson (U.C. Berkeley), C. Castaing (Univ. Montpellier), F. H. Clarke (Univ. Lyon I), G. Debreu (U.C. Berkeley), E. Dierker (Univ. Vienna), D. Duffie (Stanford Univ.), L.C. Evans (U.C. Berkeley), T. Fujimoto (Okayama Univ.), J.-M. Grandmont (CREST-CNRS), N. Hirano (Yokohama National Univ.), L. Hurwicz (Univ. of Minnesota), T. Ichiishi (Ohio State Univ.), A. Ioffe (Israel Institute of Technology), S. Iwamoto (Kyushu Univ.), K. Kamiya (Univ. Tokyo), K. Kawamata (Keio Univ.), N. Kikuchi (Keio Univ.), H. Matano (Univ. Tokyo), K. Nishimura (Kyoto Univ.), M. K. Richter (Univ. Minnesota), Y. Takahashi (Kyoto Univ.), M. Valadier (Univ. Montpellier II), M. Yano (Keio Univ).

This book suggests that business research, in the collection, analysis, and communication of evidence, will benefit from explicit acceptance of research as argumentation. Argumentation is the process of compiling an argument through selection and organization of the relevant evidence. Recently, business research methods books have placed too much emphasis on the scientific method as brute empiricism, using only large sample statistical testing and demanding prediction through retesting old theories. Especially with regard to the study of human activity, there is now much evidence that there is not one special scientific method. This book argues that all types of empirical data, including statistics and personal experiences, be accepted as data, but that it is essential that these observations be explained. This book will provide researchers and postgraduate business students with a strategy for conducting research that encourages thought, provides a way of critically perceiving previous research, as well as suggesting a logical structure for communicating their research.

In Speculative Communities, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou examines the ways that speculation has moved beyond financial markets to shape fundamental aspects of our social and political lives. As ordinary people make exceptional decisions, such as the American election of a populist demagogue or the British vote to leave the European Union, they are moving from time-honored and -tested practices of governance, toward the speculative promise of a new, more uncertain future. This book shows how even our methods of building community have shifted to the speculative realm as social media platforms enable and amplify our volatile wagers. For Komporozos-Athanasiou, "to speculate" means increasingly "to connect," to endorse the unknown pre-emptively, and often daringly, as a means of social survival. Grappling with the question of how more uncertainty can lead to its full-throated embrace rather than dissent, Speculative Communities shows how finance has become the model for society writ large. As Komporozos-Athanasiou argues, virtual marketplaces, new social media, and dating apps bring finance's opaque infrastructures into the most intimate realms of our lives, leading to a new type of speculative imagination across economy, culture, and society.

Looking from the 11th century to the 20th century, Kuroda explores how money was used and how currencies evolved in transactions within local communities and in broader trade networks. The discussion covers Asia, Europe and Africa and highlights an impressive global interconnectedness in the pre-modern era as well as the modern age. Drawing on a remarkable range of primary and secondary sources, Kuroda reveals that cash transactions were not confined to dealings between people occupying different roles in the division of labour (for example shopkeepers and farmers), rather that peasants were in fact great users of cash, even in transactions between themselves. The book presents a new categorization framework for aligning exchange transactions with money usage choices. This fascinating monograph will be of great interest to advanced students and researchers of economic history, financial history, global history and monetary studies.

Over the years, a shortage of funds has resulted in a huge deficit in government budgets for infrastructure, especially in developing economies. It is no longer feasible for governments to bear the entire burden of funding public infrastructure. Given that an inadequate supply of public infrastructure poses a challenge for the economic development of any country, partnerships with the private sector to fund public infrastructure procurement has started to be relied on as an alternative to traditional public procurement. Public-Private Partnerships are an arrangement that allow private entities to fund, design, manage and operate public infrastructure for a term in exchange for the payment of tolls by users or the government may well be the solution to the infrastructure crisis in many developing economies. This book examines the role of law in the adoption, implementation and regulation of Public-Private Partnership in selected developing economies including Brazil, India, Nigeria and South Africa to address how to deal with overlapping laws and how the law can protect assets invested in PPP in order to attract private sector interests in infrastructure financing in developing market, showing how law can be used to create, sustain and promote PPP frameworks that take into account local circumstances in developing economies.

Praise for "Sarbanes-Oxley Guide for Finance and Information Technology Professionals"

"Effective SOX programs enlist the entire organization to build and monitor a compliant control environment. However, even the best SOX programs are inefficient at best, ineffective at worst, if there is a lack of informed, competent finance and IT personnel to support the effort. This book provides these important professionals a needed resource for and road map toward successfully implementing their SOX initiative."
--Scott Green Chief Administrative Officer, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and author, "Sarbanes-Oxley and the Board of Directors"

"As a former CFO and CIO, I found this book to be an excellent synopsis of SOX, with impressive implementation summaries and checklists."
--Michael P. Cangemi CISA, Editor in Chief, "Information Systems Control Journal" and author, "Managing the Audit Function"

"An excellent introduction to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act from the perspective of the financial and IT professionals that are on the front lines of establishing compliance in their organizations. The author walks through many areas by asking 'what can go wrong' types of questions, and then outlines actions that should be taken as well as the consequences of noncompliance. This is a good book to add to one's professional library "
--Robert R. Moeller Author, "Sarbanes-Oxley and the New Internal Auditing Rules"

"Mr. Anand has compiled a solid overview of the control systems needed for not only accounting systems, but also the information technologies that support those systems. Among the Sarbanes books on the market, his coverage of both topics is unique."
--Steven M. Bragg Author, "Accounting Best Practices"

"An excellent overview of the compliance process. A must-read for anyone who needs to get up to speed quickly with Sarbanes-Oxley."
--Jack Martin Publisher, "Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal"

The ECOMAC project (Eco-management Accounting as a Tool of Environmental Man agement) has provided a framework for linking environmental management with man agement accounting. It was funded in Theme 4, 'Human Dimensions of Environmental Change' in the EU Environment and Climate Research Programme. The project is of high policy relevance by contributing to the on-going debate on eco management accounting, reporting and indicators. It is also an area needing further re search. I would like to thank the research team, companies that participated as associated con tractors, and the advisory panel. Jonathan Parker DG XII/D-5, European Commission Theme on Human Dimensions of Environmental Change 7 Preface The ECOMAC project This document is the final report on the project 'Eco-management accounting as a tool of environmental managemenf (ECOMAC). This research project was conducted under the Environment and Climate Programme (Human Dimension of Environmental Change) of the European Commission (DG XII). The ECOMAC project investigated how companies are using or intend to use environ mental costs and benefits figures in support of their decisions, and what they have been doing to remedy the limitations of conventional management accounting in this area. The research was largely explorative in nature, but the project also produced a structured overview of the subject and made suggestions and recommendations as to how compa nies could improve their own environmental accounting."

This book covers a highly relevant and timely topic that is of wide interest, especially in finance, engineering and computational biology. The introductory material on simulation and stochastic differential equation is very accessible and will prove popular with many readers. While there are several recent texts available that cover stochastic differential equations, the concentration here on inference makes this book stand out. No other direct competitors are known to date. With an emphasis on the practical implementation of the simulation and estimation methods presented, the text will be useful to practitioners and students with minimal mathematical background. What's more, because of the many R programs, the information here is appropriate for many mathematically well educated practitioners, too.

Does money blur perspectives for a better life?
Lifting the money veil from our yardsticks of progress, income and wealth, reveals the trade-offs of economic growth. The book presents new indicators of the social, economic and ecological impacts of our lifestyles and production techniques. The indicators help to identify those responsible for these impacts and account for their accountability in terms of environmental and other ("social") costs.
Sustainable development is to bring about long-term prosperity without undermining its natural foundation. For the assessment of the opaque concept we need both, physical impact measures and environmentally modified ("green") indicators of income, capital and output.
Peter Bartelmus opens the dialogue between frequently hostile camps of economists and environmentalists, data producers and users, and scientists and policy makers. Together, they may steer us towards a sustainable future.

This book provides an introduction to probability theory and its applications. The emphasis is on essential probabilistic reasoning, which is illustrated with a large number of samples. The fourth edition adds material related to mathematical finance as well as expansions on stable laws and martingales.

From the reviews: "Almost thirty years after its first edition, this charming book continues to be an excellent text for teaching and for self study." -- STATISTICAL PAPERS

The book gives a comprehensive overview of modern non-life actuarial science. It starts with a verbal description (i.e. without using mathematical formulae) of the main actuarial problems to be solved in non-life practice. Then in an extensive second chapter all the mathematical tools needed to solve these problems are dealt with - now in mathematical notation. The rest of the book is devoted to the exact formulation of various problems and their possible solutions. Being a good mixture of practical problems and their actuarial solutions, the book addresses above all two types of readers: firstly students (of mathematics, probability and statistics, informatics, economics) having some mathematical knowledge, and secondly insurance practitioners who remember mathematics only from some distance. Prerequisites are basic calculus and probability theory.

Sampling-based computational methods have become a fundamental part of the numerical toolset of practitioners and researchers across an enormous number of different applied domains and academic disciplines. This book provides a broad treatment of such sampling-based methods, as well as accompanying mathematical analysis of the convergence properties of the methods discussed. The reach of the ideas is illustrated by discussing a wide range of applications and the models that have found wide usage. The first half of the book focuses on general methods; the second half discusses model-specific algorithms. Exercises and illustrations are included.

Dramatically improve inventory accuracy with bestselling author Steven Bragg's step-by-step guidelines
Inventory Accounting is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to setting up an inventory accounting system and keeping it running at maximum efficiency. This hands-on book provides accounting professionals with essential information on how to:
* Set up an accounting system that efficiently handles accumulating inventory costs, summarizing accounts, and standard journal entries used to record transactions
* Use best practices to increase the efficiency of inventory-tracking and costing functions
* Install unique controls to combat inventory fraud
* Implement a step-by-step checklist of activities for inventory counting procedures
* Save hours of valuable time researching various GAAP reference manuals
* Adapt inventory tracking and costing systems to accommodate a variety of manufacturing systems
Spanning the entire spectrum of inventory accounting, Inventory Accounting deftly explores every facet of the field to help professionals eliminate inaccuracies from their inventory accounting systems.

From the reviews: "While this book is oriented toward students of physics, it could well be appreciated by a wider mathematical audience [ ] The text offers a rare opportunity to have a unified and modern treatment of stochastic processes in physics and finance." Bulletin of Mathematics Books

This book proposes a uniform logic and probabilistic (LP) approach to risk estimation and analysis in engineering and economics. It covers the methodological and theoretical basis of risk management at the design, test, and operation stages of economic, banking, and engineering systems with groups of incompatible events (GIE). This edition includes new chapters providing a detailed treatment of scenario logic and probabilistic models for revealing bribes. It also contains clear definitions and notations, revised sections and chapters, an extended list of references, and a new subject index, as well as more than a hundred illustrations and tables which motivate the presentation.

This book examines non-Gaussian distributions. It addresses the causes and consequences of non-normality and time dependency in both asset returns and option prices. The book is written for non-mathematicians who want to model financial market prices so the emphasis throughout is on practice. There are abundant empirical illustrations of the models and techniques described, many of which could be equally applied to other financial time series.

Recognizing the increasing importance of environmental issues, energy prices, material availability and efficiency and the difficulty of adequately managing these issues in traditional accounting systems, several companies all over the world have started implementing Environmental and Material Flow Cost Accounting (EMA and MFCA).

Environmental and Material Flow Costs Accounting explains and updates the approach developed for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DSD/UNDESA) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and in addition includes experiences of several case studies and recent developments regarding EMA and MFCA in national statistics and ISO standardization."

The book focuses on applications of belief functions to business decisions. Section I introduces the intuitive, conceptual and historical development of belief functions. Three different interpretations (the marginally correct approximation, the qualitative model, and the quantitative model) of belief functions are investigated, and rough set theory and structured query language (SQL) are used to express belief function semantics. Section II presents applications of belief functions in information systems and auditing. Included are discussions on how a belief-function framework provides a more efficient and effective audit methodology and also the appropriateness of belief functions to represent uncertainties in audit evidence. The third section deals with applications of belief functions to mergers and acquisitions; financial analysis of engineering enterprises; forecast demand for mobile satellite services; modeling financial portfolios; and economics.

The study of copulas and their role in statistics is a new but vigorously growing field. In this book the student or practitioner of statistics and probability will find discussions of the fundamental properties of copulas and some of their primary applications. The applications include the study of dependence and measures of association, and the construction of families of bivariate distributions. This book is suitable as a text or for self-study.

In recent years portfolio optimization and construction methodologies have become an increasingly critical ingredient of asset and fund management, while at the same time portfolio risk assessment has become an essential ingredient in risk management. This trend will only accelerate in the coming years. This practical handbook fills the gap between current university instruction and current industry practice. It provides a comprehensive computationally-oriented treatment of modern portfolio optimization and construction methods using the powerful NUOPT for S-PLUS optimizer.

In times of globalization, competition and economic and technological progress, the permanent improvement of the planning, coordination and control system of companies is a major task of Controlling. This book presents a concise concept for the design of a ratio and management report system for each functional part of the company. It addresses as well practitioners who seek decision support in their day-to-day business, as scientists and students who want to obtain information about the state of the art of Management Control and Controllership.

In August, 1976 the research seminar 'Decision-making in business' was organized at Nijenrode, The Netherlands School of Business. More than fifty scientists and practitioners from nine countries presented research papers in one of the six discussion groups. Some of them also presented some of their ideas in front of a large mixed audience at a one-day symposium. Many of the papers presented at Nijenrode were of such a high quality that the decision to publish a selection of them was an easy one. At the same time the new series Nijenrode studies in business was initiated. All who were involved, the policy committee of the N ijenrode studies, the advisory and editorial board of the series, the publisher, and the organizing committee of the seminar and symposium, acclaimed the idea of publishing three volumes in the new series. A collection of eleven papers could be grouped under the title Trends in managerial andfinancial accounting. Another collection will be published as volume 2 of this series under the title TI'ends in financial decision-making, while volume 3 will consist of papers exploring the theme Trends in business ethics. The books are intended for those who are interested in new developments in the decision-making area. They are especially suitable for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses: volume 1 in managerial or financial accounting courses; volume 2 in courses on managerial finance, capital budgeting or decision making; and volume 3 in courses on business ethics or related fields."

This book studies pricing financial derivatives with a partial differential equation approach. The treatment is mathematically rigorous and covers a variety of topics in finance including forward and futures contracts, the Black-Scholes model, European and American type options, free boundary problems, lookback options, interest rate models, interest rate derivatives, swaps, caps, floors, and collars. Each chapter concludes with exercises.

This is a management oriented book about efficiency, quality and effectiveness designed for an audience of management practitioners, scholars, and students. The integrative approach developed in this book contains new ideas regarding quality and efficiency-based effective management. These ideas lend themselves to managerial applications. This work is not meant to provide an exhaustive account of the measurement, and applications of effectiveness, quality, and efficiency concepts. With the exception of the treatment of conventional productivity concepts and measurements in Chapter 2, and of production flexibility in Chapter 5, the discussion in this book is largely non-teclmical. Among management practitioners, the book may be of particular interest to managers with broad strategic orientations in the fields of production management, quality management, marketing, and management of human resources. The academic audience is likely to include scholars and students interested in strategic planning, applied productivity analysis, quality management, marketing management, and management of human resources. The book could also be used as a supplementary text to or part of the readings in basic and advanced courses in strategic management, production management, and quality management. Concepts and dimensions of efficiency, quality, and effectiveness, as used throughout this book, are introduced in Chapter 1. The intricate sets of relationships among effectiveness, quality, and efficiency are explored.

Interest Rate Models: an Infinite Dimensional Stochastic Analysis Perspective studies the mathematical issues that arise in modeling the interest rate term structure. These issues are approached by casting the interest rate models as stochastic evolution equations in infinite dimensional function spaces. The book is comprised of three parts. Part I is a crash course on interest rates, including a statistical analysis of the data and an introduction to some popular interest rate models. Part II is a self-contained introduction to infinite dimensional stochastic analysis, including SDE in Hilbert spaces and Malliavin calculus. Part III presents some recent results in interest rate theory, including finite dimensional realizations of HJM models, generalized bond portfolios, and the ergodicity of HJM models.