Over the course of the last ten years the issue of debt has become a serious problem that threatens to destroy the global socio-economic system and ruin the everyday lives of millions of people. This collection brings together a range of perspectives of key thinkers on debt to provide a sociological analysis focused upon the social, political, economic, and cultural meanings of indebtedness. The contributors to the book consider both the lived experience of debt and the more abstract processes of financialisation taking place globally. Showing how debt functions on the level of both macro- and microeconomics, the book also provides a more holistic perspective, with accounts that span sociological, cultural, and economic forms of analysis.

Islamic finance has grown exponentially since 1963 and has reached more than 70 countries around the world with the asset size of about $2.5 trillion. The Islamic financial system today comprises a sizable asset base and there is evidence of sustained demand for Islamic financial products and services in the global market, with demand outstripping supply. This book provides a new source of understanding of the Islamic financial products in view of facilitating academia, industrialists, professionals, product designers, students and policymakers globally. There is a mass of literature on Islamic finance available to the market, but very little research is found in the form of book exclusively on Islamic financial products and their structures. Thus, this book is a timely contribution to the global market with Islamic financial product solutions.

This volume provides a comprehensive study of Turkey's financial transformation into one of the most dynamic, if not trouble-free, emerging capitalisms. While this financial evolution has underwritten Turkey's dramatic economic growth, it has done so without ameliorating the persistently exploitative and unequal social structures that characterize neoliberalism today. This edited volume, written by an interdisciplinary range of political economists, critically examines Turkey's financial transformation, contributing to debates on the nature of peripheral financialization. Eschewing economistic interpretations, The Political Economy of Financial Transformation in Turkey underscores both the quantitative significance of exponential growth in financial flows and investments, and the qualitative importance of the state's institutional restructuring around financial imperatives. The book presents today's reality as historically rooted. By understanding the choices made under the new Republic (from 1923 onwards), one can better locate the changes launched as a newly liberalizing society (since 1980). Likewise, the decisions made in response to Turkey's 2001 financial crisis spurred a tectonic break in state-market-society financial relations. The waves of change have reached far and wide: from corporate strategies of accumulation and growth to small- and medium-sized enterprises' strategies of financial survival; from how finance has penetrated the provisioning of housing to how households have become financialized. Put together, one grasps the complexity and historicity of the power of contemporary finance. One also sees that the changes made have not been class-neutral, but have entailed elevating the interests of major capital groups, particularly financial capital, above the interests of the poor and workers in Turkey. Nor are these changes constrained to its national borders, as what transpires domestically contributes to the making of a financialized world market. Through this 'Made in Turkey' approach the contributions in this volume thus challenge dominant understandings of financialization, which are derived from the advanced capitalisms, by sharing the specificity of emerging capitalisms such as Turkey.

Mainstream research has rationalized China's stock market on the basis of paradigms such as the institutional approach, the efficient market hypothesis, and corporate valuation principles. The deviations from such paradigms have been analyzed as puzzles of China's stock market. Girardin and Liu explore to what extent, in the perspective of Chinese cultural and historical characteristics, far from being puzzles, these 'deviations' are rather the symptoms of a consistent strategy for the design, development and regulation of a government-dominated financial system. This book will help investors, observers and researchers understand the hidden logic of the design and functioning of China's modern stock market, taking a political economy view.

This book analyses the bearing of global monotheistic faiths towards the philosophy and practice of record keeping and accounting throughout history. The author offers a comprehensive discussion of the literal and figurative processes of taking account and ascribing accountability that link religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Chapters address theology and accounting in tandem with social behaviours to demonstrate how auditing and calculating customs permeate practising religions. This book first highlights how the four monotheisms have viewed and incorporated accounting historically, and then looks forward to the accounting debates, technologies and traditions in today's world that derive from these religious customs. Drawing heavily on the writings of Max Weber and Werner Sombart, the author demonstrates that accounting and capitalism have religious roots far beyond the Protestant ethic.

Exchanges play an essential and central role in the world's economy. They epitomize transparency in the price-formation process, informing investors and disseminating vital information for the functioning of financial markets, and in so doing they represent an important source of capital for nascent and established companies alike. Even during the recent crisis, exchanges remained open and liquid in the face of extreme volatility-thus the trust investors place in regulated exchanges when confronted with uncertainty is beyond doubt.
Since the inception of the World Federation of Exchanges in the 1960s, the operational and competitive landscape for organized exchanges has changed radically. Technology and globalization have allowed financial flows to move freely across borders, and burgeoning competition and lower regulatory barriers have spurred far-reaching transformations in the way securities are traded.
Against this background, and on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the World Federation of Exchanges, the WFE has partnered with Larry Harris and the Centre for European Policy Studies to produce a definitive volume of essays to take a look at the historic role exchanges have played in the global economy, highlighting pivotal innovations that shaped this role, and to lay out prospective ways in which exchanges will continue to shape the global economy in the future. Opening with key conceptual essays by leading academics, Regulated Exchanges examines the historical contribution of exchanges to the world's economic growth, exchanges' economic importance, and the regulatory characteristics of the space in which exchanges operate. The volume then presents essays on several defining milestones in the history of exchanges written by leading figures that took part in that very history, showing the interaction between the founding of exchanges, local cultures, and world financial markets. The book appropriately closes with a look forward, examining the competitive landscape and the exciting and promising future of regulated exchanges.
Offering an unparalleled collection of perspectives from leading academics and practitioners involved in the history of exchanges, Regulated Exchanges sheds a brilliant and welcome light on how exchanges have influenced and fostered successful financial markets, and how they will do so for many years to come.

This book considers the theme of capital markets prowess and its link with surrounding economic dexterity. It presents the story on the back of dual intertwined cornerstone pillars: The initial agenda sets the global macroeconomic context and its interplay with financial markets and sub-segment capital markets. Then the book moves to the evolvement of the inherent capital markets, from nascence to present day, and through profiling of the current operating surroundings. The latter pillar performs empirical research built upon Eugene Fama's weak form efficiency theorem with statistical testing results further framing the comprehensive findings on five selected southeast European developing capital markets. Jointly the two parts present the first such well-documented capital markets set up complemented by wide-ranging empirical findings of inefficiency. The book introduces at first the global perspective, in which the growing globalization in the past decades has led to improved efficiencies, to faster innovation, and to greater systemic connectedness and meaningfully so by an increasing contribution from transitioning economies. Nevertheless, in higher systemic concentration there is an implied higher volatility risk and evidence has revealed dichotomous reaction through divergence in impact between the developed and the developing economies. The capital markets industry is at the forefront of financial innovation and many aspects in its function and power are a determining factor in wider socio-economic progress. The findings uncover details of market structure and role and with that this work creates significant new knowledge on the industry, and will be of particular interest to investors, taxpayers, academics, researchers, and policy makers of capital markets.

Volume 4 in this research series contains nine papers. Following the tradition of the earlier volumes, it is similar in style to the first three volumes and illustrates ongoing research thrusts on a variety of financial economics issues that are germane to working capital management. The papers have been logically divided into three parts.

The first part of the volume focuses on the issues covering short-term interest rates, short-term financial management, and a cash balance model. Part two contains papers that examine the issue of trade credit analysis under a competitive pricing situation and an environment in which the level of sales fluctuates. Finally Part 3 departs from the traditional discussions on working capital management in that it explores dividend payouts and tax environment changes as a source of concern to treasury (and financial) managers.

This fourth volume presents a rich variety of papers that address an expanding facet of working capital management. It is hoped that the papers are found to be informative and act to stimulate research and practice in the area of treasury/financial management.

This book uncovers the idea of understanding cybersecurity management in FinTech. It commences with introducing fundamentals of FinTech and cybersecurity to readers. It emphasizes on the importance of cybersecurity for financial institutions by illustrating recent cyber breaches, attacks, and financial losses. The book delves into understanding cyber threats and adversaries who can exploit those threats. It advances with cybersecurity threat, vulnerability, and risk management in FinTech. The book helps readers understand cyber threat landscape comprising different threat categories that can exploit different types of vulnerabilties identified in FinTech. It puts forward prominent threat modelling strategies by focusing on attackers, assets, and software and addresses the challenges in managing cyber risks in FinTech. The authors discuss detailed cybersecurity policies and strategies that can be used to secure financial institutions and provide recommendations to secure financial institutions from cyber-attacks.

A groundbreaking look at complexity theory and its implications in the world of finance
Complexity theory tells us that processes with a large number of seemingly independent agents-such as free markets-can spontaneously organize themselves into a coherent system. In this fascinating book, Edgar Peters brings together scientific theory, the artistic process, and economics to show how the randomness and uncertainty of complexity theory can be applied to financial markets. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this is a thoughtful, conceptual look at the way free markets are, by their nature, continually evolving complex systems. Expanding on previous explorations of chaos theory, Peters draws on real-life examples ranging from the Asian crisis to America's love of conspiracy to show that complexity and randomness are necessary for the free markets to operate in a competitive manner.

This book is among the first to address the issue of assessing the efficiency of sustainable development financing from a theoretical and methodical point of view. The innovative nature of research is expressed through the study of new phenomena in finance including sustainable financial systems, sustainable finance, ESG risk and individual and institutional motivations of financial managers in the sustainability concept. The book aims to draw attention to the significant gap in the existing research.The concept of Sustainable Development, if placed in an economic category, requires a lot of attention, but seeing the cognitive category from the perspective of the discipline of finance, the latter is unsatisfactory, with questions remaining unanswered. At the same time, the rank problem, its strategic dimension and the amount of financial resources allocated and disbursed for the purposes of focusing around sustainable development, identification of financial phenomena accompanying this category is seen as a priority. Most measures financing Sustainable Development and measures of public spending efficiency are measures subject to rigor and rules due to their specificity, which means actions aimed at increasing efficiency are treated as a priority. This book will be of interest to leading representatives of academia, practitioners, executives, officials, and graduate students in economics, finance, management, statistics, law and political sciences.

Institutional profit realization has become highly contingent on research education, investment, and planning; yet, the methodology of research may not be clear to young researchers or students of Economics and Management Science. In Research and Profit Maximization in Finance and Economics, author Christopher Warburton breaks the methodology of research into three component parts: the essence of research; avenues from which data on economic indicators could be obtained; and the estimation of assorted models for forecasting economic indicators to maximize profit. The central concept of profit maximization is presented to incorporate the optimization problem in Economics. The substitution, Langrangean, graphing, and linear programming methods of optimization are fully explained. Data and model discussions include practical examples of stationary and non-stationary data, as well as univariate, multivariate, and atheoretic (Box-Jenkins) regression models. Research and Profit Maximization in Finance and Economics is a concise presentation to meet notable challenges in academic and business research, which involve data collection, basic data estimation, forecasting, and profit maximization.

While many financial engineering books are available, the statistical aspects behind the implementation of stochastic models used in the field are often overlooked or restricted to a few well-known cases. Statistical Methods for Financial Engineering guides current and future practitioners on implementing the most useful stochastic models used in financial engineering. After introducing properties of univariate and multivariate models for asset dynamics as well as estimation techniques, the book discusses limits of the Black-Scholes model, statistical tests to verify some of its assumptions, and the challenges of dynamic hedging in discrete time. It then covers the estimation of risk and performance measures, the foundations of spot interest rate modeling, Levy processes and their financial applications, the properties and parameter estimation of GARCH models, and the importance of dependence models in hedge fund replication and other applications. It concludes with the topic of filtering and its financial applications. This self-contained book offers a basic presentation of stochastic models and addresses issues related to their implementation in the financial industry. Each chapter introduces powerful and practical statistical tools necessary to implement the models. The author not only shows how to estimate parameters efficiently, but he also demonstrates, whenever possible, how to test the validity of the proposed models. Throughout the text, examples using MATLAB (R) illustrate the application of the techniques to solve real-world financial problems. MATLAB and R programs are available on the author's website.

Discover how $55 million in cryptocurrency vanished in one of the most bizarre thefts in history Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist that Almost Destroyed It All tells the astonishing tale of the disappearance of $55 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether in June 2016. It also chronicles the creation of the Ethereum blockchain from the mind of inventor Vitalik Buterin to the ragtag group of people he assembled around him to build the second-largest crypto universe after Bitcoin. Celebrated journalist and author Matthew Leising tells the full story of one of the most incredible chapters in cryptocurrency history. He covers the aftermath of the heist as well, explaining the extreme lengths the victims of the theft and the creators of Ethereum went to in order to try and limit the damage. The book covers: The creation of Ethereum An explanation of the nature of blockchain and cryptocurrency The activities of a colorful cast of hackers, coders, investors, and thieves Perfect for anyone with even a passing interest in the world of modern fintech or daring electronic heists, Out of the Ether is a story of genius and greed that's so incredible you may just choose not to believe it.

This book is a collection of 21 original papers on Latin American finance by prominent researchers in and out of the region. This is an attempt to bring them together under the same umbrella so that the commonality and peculiarity of Latin finance can be more easily discerned across different applications as well as compared across countries. While topics are diverse (encompassing corporate finance, banking, equity and bond markets, dollarization, and pension funds), the papers range from country-specific to comparative and international in perspectives.

"A systematic review of the structure and context of the blockchain-derived economic model... (the book) describes cryptoeconomics in connection with the game theory, behavioral economics and others in simple understandable language."-Wang Feng, founder of Linekong Interactive Group and Mars Finance, partner in Geekbang Venture Capital Blockchain technology has subverted existing perceptions and is the start of an economic revolution, called, cryptoeconomics. Blockchain is a key component of cryptoeconomics. Vlad Zamfir, a developer of Ethereum, defines this term as "a formal discipline that studies protocols that governs the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in a decentralized digital economy. Cryptoeconomics is a practical science that focuses on the design and characterization of these protocols". This book explains the structures of blockchain-derived economic models, their history, and their application. It uses real-world cases to illustrate the relationship between cryptoeconomics and blockchain. Blockchain technology solves trust issues. A blockchain application can restrict behavior on the blockchain through a reward and punishment system that enables consensus in an innovative way. The greatest significance of cryptoeconomics lies in guaranteeing safety, stability, activity, and order in a decentralized consensus system. Security and stability are achieved mainly by cryptographical mechanisms. Activity and order are achieved through economic mechanisms. Cryptoeconomics and Blockchain: Ignighting a New Era of Blockchain discusses the most popular consensus algorithms and optimization mechanisms. With examples explained in clear and simple terms that are easy to understand, the book also explores economic mechanisms of blockchain such as game theory and behavioral economics.

A total of eleven papers in this volume represent recent research on important topics in finance. The contributions include analyses of issues relating to asset prices, the behavior of stock returns, and capital-raising activities. Hodges, et al. employ stochastic dominance arguments to show that the efficiency of time diversification depends on the degree of autocorrelation in security returns. In their study of the announcement effects of ninety-three minority equity investments, Chan, et. al. find a neutral stock price response on average for acquiring firms but a significantly positive response for selling firms. Nguyen, et al. provide evidence on the returns structure of U.S. information technology stocks surrounding the bursting of the internet bubble in early 2000. In a study of the informational effects of auditor reputation, Godby and Mahar, Jr. find that implied volatilities for firms audited by Andersen have increased relative to those for firms audited by other Big Five firms. Charaput and Chang find that the usage of installment receipts enhances liquidity in Canadian secondary equity offerings.

The contributions to this volume also examine important issues in international finance and financial institutions. Brailsford, et al. use a VECM technique to examine Purchasing Power Parity and causality between the yen and the dollar. Sarmas studies the impact of Hong Kong's fixed exchange rate system and Singapore's floating exchange rate system on the correlation between the US and the two respective countries' stock markets. Povel develops a theoretical model to explain multiple banking as a commitment device. Baer, et al. develop a model and empirically examine how thecreation of a futures clearinghouse can reduce the need for margin in bilateral and multilateral settings. Roberts and Siddiqi provide an empirical analysis of the link between collateralization and the number of lenders in private debt contracts. Finally, Tripp et al. empirically examine the relative efficiency of single versus multiple common bond credit unions.

This book analyzes in depth all major derivatives debacles of the last half century including the multi-billion losses and/or bankruptcy of Metallgesellschaft (1994), Barings Bank (1995), Long Term Capital Management (1998), Amaranth (2006), Societe Generale (2008) and AIG (2008). It unlocks the secrets of derivatives by telling the stories of institutions which played in the derivative market and lost big. For some of these unfortunate organizations it was daring but flawed financial engineering which brought them havoc. For others it was unbridled speculation perpetrated by rogue traders whose unchecked fraud brought their house down.Should derivatives be feared "as financial weapons of mass destruction" or hailed as financial innovations which through efficient risk transfer are truly adding to the Wealth of Nations? By presenting a factual analysis of how the malpractice of derivatives played havoc with derivative end-user and dealer institutions, a case is made for vigilance not only to market and counter-party risk but also operational risk in their use for risk management and proprietary trading. Clear and recurring lessons across the different stories call not only for a tighter but also "smarter" control system of derivatives trading and should be of immediate interest to financial managers, bankers, traders, auditors and regulators who are directly or indirectly exposed to financial derivatives.The book groups cases by derivative category, starting with the simplest and building up to the most complex - namely, Forwards, Futures, Options and Swaps in that order, with applications in commodities, foreign exchange, stock indices and interest rates. Each chapter deals with one derivative debacle, providing a rigorous and comprehensive but non-technical elucidation of what happened.The book is translated and available in French, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Korean.

Charles Ross, a financial expert and a former investment officer with a major financial institution, offers a reliable source for Christians to turn to for guidance and help in today's financially complex world. Each chapter includes relevant Scriptures and biblical principles, as well as the experience of individuals who have applied the financial guidelines taught by Charles Ross.

Over the past two decades, China's robust economic performance has propelled it to the world stage. At the same time, the world has increasingly scrutinized China's economic policies and activities. One of the hotly contested issues is China's foreign exchange rate policy. China's current reform and modernization policies to convert its centrally planned economy towards a market-driven one could hardly draw on experiences of other countries.This book provides a succinct and up-to-date account of China's exchange rate policy including the currency undervaluation debate and the internationalization of its currency. It begins with a brief history of the modern China's foreign exchange rate policy. In particular, it highlights the three Chinese policy characteristics; namely, independence, controllability and practicability, and graduality. This prologue helps to interpret China's policy on its currency, the renminbi (RMB); including its recent initiatives to promote the international use of its currency.The book covers the basic theoretical and empirical issues that are relevant for determining the equilibrium value of the RMB exchange rate and, hence, its degree of misalignment. Then it evaluates the controversy surrounding the RMB valuation debate, and highlights the sensitivity of empirical estimates of the degree of misalignment to alternative presumptions.The book also examines the timely issues related to China's recent efforts in promoting the use of its currency in the global financial market. After describing the background of China's recent efforts to internationalize the RMB, the book a) discusses the main promotional policies, including the recent Qianhai project and Shanghai Free Trade Zone initiative, b) evaluates the current status of the offshore RMB market, the level of international use of the RMB and the admission to the SDR basket, and c) assesses the future prospects of the RMB to be a global currency.

Cyber risk has become increasingly reported as a major problem for financial sector businesses. It takes many forms including fraud for purely monetary gain, hacking by people hostile to a company causing business interruption or damage to reputation, theft by criminals or malicious individuals of the very large amounts of customer information ("big data") held by many companies, misuse including accidental misuse or lack of use of such data, loss of key intellectual property, and the theft of health and medical data which can have a profound effect on the insurance sector. This book assesses the major cyber risks to businesses and discusses how they can be managed and the risks reduced. It includes case studies of the situation in different financial sectors and countries in relation to East Asia, Europe and the United States. It takes an interdisciplinary approach assessing cyber risks and management solutions from an economic, management risk, legal, security intelligence, insurance, banking and cultural perspective.

This volume contains contemporary analysis of three key developments in financial economics: financial integration; the dynamics of financial markets; and the information, computer, and technology revolution and its impact on markets and the economic performance, among others. With regard to financial integration, the contributions focus on three streams in international finance: the impact of increased financial integration on credit risk and on the required regulatory arrangements needed to reduce the probability of welfare reducing bank failures, the creation of new international currencies, and the relationship between finance and growth. With regard to the dynamics of financial markets, specific attention is devoted to the complex interaction of different sets of traders with heterogeneous beliefs and information sets. Finally, with respect to the ICT revolution, attention is focused on its impact on: foreign direct investment across countries, competition in the banking industry, consolidation in the financial services industry including its effects credit availability for small and medium sized enterprises, and the capital structure decisions of financial firms.

While the important topic of women's empowerment through microfinance has been the subject of academic and practitioner interest, Ramchandani examines these issues from brand-new perspectives. This new work focuses on the Self-Help Group (SHG) model, an under-studied aspect of microfinance practice, and looks at both rural communicates and urban slums. Ramchandani presents recent empirical work from India including first-hand field-level case studies, where microfinance plays a key development role in reducing poverty, addressing women's empowerment, and fostering rural economic growth.

This book and the underlying research address the questions: "How successful are U.S. retirees at sustaining assets from retirement to death?" and "What retirement strategies will enhance their ability to live a successful retirement?" Taking a hard look at real-world retirement statistics from multiple government surveys to answer those questions, it calculates the effects of specific strategies on retirement sustainability. It also discusses the background to prior retirement planning research and describes the three research groups used: 1) determining the success rates of the base population considering only social capital annual income and distributions from portfolios of financial assets, 2) adding the strategy of home equity conversion mortgages, and 3) increasing annual income through delayed social security benefit claiming and continuing work after retirement. The book then examines and compares the results for each to determine whose retirement will be most enhanced by the strategies. Lastly, it presents case studies applying research to real-world financial planning cases.