In this work, Christopher Chen examines and compares the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives in Hong Kong and Singapore, the two largest international financial centres in Asia Pacific. Chen analyses current or proposed regulations on trade reporting, centralised clearing and mandatory exchange trading mandates regarding OTC derivatives against the backdrop of reforms of international financial regulatory structure after the global financial crisis. The article also relates the reforms in Asia to development in major Western markets such as the US, the UK or the European Union. Apart from technical comparison and dissecting of content of rules from different angles, his work also examines the rationale behind those reforms and policy concerns behind Asian adoption of the regulatory mandates prescribed by G20 as well as potential policy concerns (such as competition and extraterritoriality) in a market that is dominated by Western banks.

As a response to ongoing economic, social and environmental crises, many private actors have enlarged their definition of 'value' to include environmental and social elements. Such practices, however, appear incompatible with the current epistemological structure of academic financial discourse. This paradox challenges us to reconsider the foundations of modern finance, particularly the dominant role of shareholders. The volume argues there is a need to turn the established order upside down. Studies in economics and finance have to be embedded in environmental and social welfare to answer the challenges we face, and there is a need for a radical break with the methodological individualism that dominates economics, management and (especially) finance. It is our responsibility to question social welfare when it is defined only as maximising shareholder value. Should we instead promote a substitute to the shareholder? How should we (re)define the concept of value? This volume serves as a stepping stone for rethinking academic finance, and attempts to carve out innovative paths for financial research in the 21st century.

As foreign direct investment of U.S. multinational firms increases rapidly, some key questions emerge from this trend: What is the true nature of multinationality and what are its impacts on firm performance? Both questions are answered in this book through an examination of the nature of multinationality and its alternative measures and the effect of the degree of multinationality on firm performance, where firm performance is expressed by firm value, financial performance, prediction performance of earnings forecasts, diversification strategy and ownership structure, and corporate financing. The book is of value to all those interested in international business, finance and accounting issues, including professional accountants, business executives, teachers, researchers, and students.

Economic development is a priority for all nation-states, whether developing or developed. In recent times, a few among the developing nations - often referred to as the emerging economies - have attracted the world's attention because of their fast pace of economic growth. While the similarities among these nations (for example the BRICS) in the pattern of their economic growth are highlighted and discussed, the differences are often glossed over. This book, therefore, attempts to present the diverse ways in which entrepreneurship is facilitated in emerging economies, through a compilation of research papers from six different countries (India, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Nigeria and New Zealand) belonging to the class of emerging economies. The papers included in this book cover a variety of topics related to the creation and management of an entrepreneurial ecosystem, such as intercultural interactions, IPR issues, government policies for SMEs, social entrepreneurship, opportunity identification, green entrepreneurship, employee entrepreneurship, symbiotic ventures and social capital, social fluidity mapping for reducing failure stigma, green awareness in the corporate world and among entrepreneurs, venture capital for growth, immigrant entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial success and life satisfaction, among others. The contributions are supported by an introductory chapter that provides an integrative framework by unifying the diverse patterns of economic development in the different countries under various institutional inadequacies as a process of "muddling-through to development", necessitated by the non-systematic development of the ecosystem for new venture creation. This book is indeed a must-read for those interested in understanding the process of entrepreneurship and economic development in emerging economies.

Many sophisticated investors will tell you it is neither necessary nor possible to time the market. In Why Most Investors Fail and Why You Don't Have To, author Michael Jon Allen shows you why they are wrong and then outlines an investment strategy that works.

Allen, who bridges the gap between fundamental and quantitative analysis and demonstrates his unique multidisciplined style of investment, shows you how to invest in a system that

- consistently outperforms peers;- reduces risk;- uses no more than five exchange-traded index funds;- trades only a few times per year;- requires no additional research.

This guide provides an overview of stocks, bonds, gold, cash, and real estate investments. It shares the five keys to changing the odds, and it presents a simple, proven investment strategy to help you realize greater returns on your money.

Can Islamic finance save the global system? Islamic Finance and the New Financial System describes how the adoption of Islamic finance principles in future regulatory decisions could help prevent future shocks in the global financial system. Using illustrations and examples to highlight key points in recent history, this book discusses the causes of financial crises, why they are becoming more frequent and increasingly severe, and how the new financial system will incorporate elements of Islamic finance whether deliberately or not. With an introspective look at the system and an examination of the misconceptions and deficiencies in theory vs. practice, readers will learn why Islamic finance has not been as influential as it should be on the larger global system. Solutions to these crises are thoroughly detailed, and the author puts forth a compelling argument about what can be expected in the future. Despite international intervention and global policy changes, the financial system remains in a fragile state. There is an argument to be made about integrating Islamic finance into the new system to facilitate stronger resilience, and this book explains the nuts and bolts of the idea while providing the reader with a general understanding of Islamic finance. * Understand the key principles of Islamic finance * Examine the history of the current financial system * Discover how Islamic finance can help build a new debt-free economy * Learn how Islamic finance theory doesn't always dictate practice Although Islamic finance is a growing market, it is still a foreign concept to many. Those within the Islamic finance circles wonder why the system has yet to gain broader appeal despite its ability to create a strong and well-balanced economy. Islamic Finance and the New Financial System provides clever analysis and historical background to put the issues into perspective.

The book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on finance, with a special focus on stock markets. It presents new methodologies for analyzing stock markets' behavior and discusses theories and methods of finance from different angles, such as the mathematical, physical and philosophical ones. The book, which aims at philosophers and economists alike, represents a rare yet important attempt to unify the externalist with the internalist conceptions of finance.

This book presents solutions to the general problem of single period portfolio optimization. It introduces different linear models, arising from different performance measures, and the mixed integer linear models resulting from the introduction of real features. Other linear models, such as models for portfolio rebalancing and index tracking, are also covered. The book discusses computational issues and provides a theoretical framework, including the concepts of risk-averse preferences, stochastic dominance and coherent risk measures. The material is presented in a style that requires no background in finance or in portfolio optimization; some experience in linear and mixed integer models, however, is required. The book is thoroughly didactic, supplementing the concepts with comments and illustrative examples.

This Festschrift resulted from a workshop on "Advanced Modelling in Mathematical Finance" held in honour of Ernst Eberlein's 70th birthday, from 20 to 22 May 2015 in Kiel, Germany. It includes contributions by several invited speakers at the workshop, including several of Ernst Eberlein's long-standing collaborators and former students. Advanced mathematical techniques play an ever-increasing role in modern quantitative finance. Written by leading experts from academia and financial practice, this book offers state-of-the-art papers on the application of jump processes in mathematical finance, on term-structure modelling, and on statistical aspects of financial modelling. It is aimed at graduate students and researchers interested in mathematical finance, as well as practitioners wishing to learn about the latest developments.

China has initiated and implemented its economic reforms for over 30 years, however, the comprehensive economic reforms and opening up is still unfolding. The author was a state leader, who has personally engaged in China's economic policy-making process from 1999 to 2008, and is an economist, who has deeply studied and thought over China's financial reform in various aspects. This book summarizes the results of the author's research on China's financial reforms, adopting the fictitious economy theory, in the past 10 years.Financial Reforms and Development in China focuses on the developmental process and main features of the fictitious economy; the essence and the law of the fictitious capital (including credit capital, knowledge capital, social capital, etc.); the relationship between the fictitious economy and the real economy. The book attempts to use the fictitious economy theory to analyze the chaos and self-organization of financial system, financial crisis, inflation and deflation, economic globalization, and knowledge-based economy and society.The book, comprising 12 chapters, covers all the main aspects of China's financial reform and provides readers with a practitioner's reading of China's financial markets, including financial globalization, the financial system and product innovation, financial crisis, financial security, financial regulation, universal banking, capital markets, money market, commercial banks, rural finance, futures markets, foreign exchange markets, financial derivatives, equity markets, insurance and so on.The book is invaluable from the perspectives of its contribution to economic theory, in developing an understanding of the actual workings of China's economic and financial reforms in the past decade, and in forecasting future developments in China's economy and financial markets. It will appeal to academics, undergraduate students, graduate students, professionals, general readers interested in finance, the financial reform and market in China, as well as China's development and the fictitious economy.

This book explores financial stability issues in the context of East Asia. In the East Asian region financial stability has been a major concern ever since the Asian crisis of 1997/98, which still looms large in the collective memory of the affected countries. The global crisis, which had its starting point in 2007, only served to exacerbate this concern. Safeguarding financial stability is therefore a major goal of any country in the region. Diverging cultural, political and economic backgrounds may however pose different stability challenges and necessary cooperation may be complicated by this diversity. Against this backdrop the contributions of this book by leading academics from the fields of economics and law as well as by practitioners from central banks shed light on various financial stability issues. The volume explores the legal environment of central banks as lenders of last resort and analyzes challenges to financial stability such as shadow banking and the choice of exchange rate regimes. Case studies from China, Japan and Indonesia are contrasted with experiences from Europe.

This book provides advanced analytics and decision management techniques and tools for developing sustainable competitive advantages in the studied target context. In order to achieve sustainable economy, the capacity to endure, it is essential to understand and study the mechanisms for interactions and impact from and among these perspectives.

This book describes specific problems and proposes solutions for different areas of finance in Central and Southeastern European countries. Covering a broad spectrum of topics, from monetary economics and electronic money to capital markets, banking and insurance, it comprises theoretical and empirical contributions by authors from nine countries - Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Serbia and Greece. Intended for academics as well as policy makers and practitioners it offers new perspectives on Central and Southeastern European finance research.

This book is an elementary introduction to the basic concepts of financial mathematics with a central focus on discrete models and an aim to demonstrate simple but widely used financial derivatives for managing market risks. Only a basic knowledge of probability, real analysis, ordinary differential equations, linear algebra and some common sense are required to utilise this book. Financial mathematics is an application of advanced mathematical and statistical methods to financial management and markets, with a main objective to quantify and hedge risks. Since the book aims to present the basics of financial mathematics to the reader, only essential elements of probability and stochastic analysis are given to explain ideas on derivative pricing and hedging. To keep the reader intrigued and motivated, the book has a sandwich structure: Probability and stochastics are given on the spot, at places where mathematics can almost immediately be illustrated by an application to finance. The first part of the book introduces one of the main principles in finance - no arbitrage pricing.It also introduces main financial instruments such as forward and futures contracts, bonds and swaps, and options. This part is not mathematical. The second part deals with pricing and hedging of European- and American-type options in the discrete time setting. In addition, the concept of complete and incomplete markets is discussed. Elementary probability is briefly revised and discrete-time - discrete-space stochastic processes used in financial modelling are considered. The third part discusses stochastic analysis and introduces the Wiener process, Ito integrals, and stochastic differential equations. The main feature of this final part of the book is the famous Black - Scholes formula for pricing European options. Some guidance for further study of this exciting and rapidly changing subject is given in the last chapter. The book has approximately 100 exercises, for which most solutions have been provided.

This book aims to provide a rigorous yet pragmatic approach to the valuation and management of investments in the energy sector.

Time and uncertainty pervade most if not all issues relevant to energy assets. They run from the early stage of prototype and demonstration to the ultimate abandonment and decommissioning.

Risk in particular appears in several areas; thus, one can distinguish technical risk from financial risk. Furthermore, the extent to which one can react to them is different (just think of price risk and regulation risk). Markets in general, and financial markets in particular, regularly put a price on a number of assets which differ in their return/risk characteristics. And academia has developed sound financial principles for valuation purposes in a number of contexts.

Nonetheless, the physical characteristics of the assets involved also play a key role in their valuation if only because of the restrictions that they entail.

There are some instances in which the practitioner/researcher is able to come up with an analytical solution to the valuation problem. Typically, however, these instances are limited because of their relying on stylized facts or idealized frameworks. Unfortunately, many relevant instances lack analytical solutions, so one must resort to numerical methods. The book clearly explains how to implement them in a meaningful way. Their usefulness is further enhanced when numerical estimates of relevant parameters are derived from actual market prices (as long as these are available and reliable).

The book starts from the basics of valuation in a dynamic, certain context. The second part then considers uncertainty and introduces a number of useful results and tools to grapple effectively with it. The last part applies these tools to the valuation of energy assets in a sequential manner, i.e. by considering one, two and three sources of risk. The last chapter provides examples of joint optimal management and value maximization in conventional power plants.

This proceedings volume highlights important points of achieving a balanced and sustained growth path from diverse economics and finance perspectives, touching on a wide array of economic and social analyses in India. Featuring contributions presented at the 2018 International Conference on Economics and Finance (ICEF-2018) held at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Goa, India, the enclosed papers explore topics such as inflation dynamics, information transmission in post-recession era, leverage effect and volatility asymmetry, structural change and economic growth and reforming tax systems, among others. The Indian economy today is remarkable and, not surprisingly, it is growing very rapidly. It has emerged as the fastest growing major economy in the world as per the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and it is expected to be one of the top three economic powers of the world over the next 10 to15 years, backed by its strong democracy and partnership. At the backdrop of impressive progress of the Indian economy during the last two decades, the question that remains to be answered is does India still have a long way to go before it is functioning well as a market economy? This book critically examines the performance of the Indian economy at the national, state and sectorial levels. Featuring contributions from leading academicians, scholars and practitioners from Asia and the rest of the world, this book is an asset to students, professors, scholars, practitioners and policy makers in the areas of India economics, finance and sustainable development.

A Fragile Balance examines strategies to promote emergency savings, especially among underserved households. Each chapter is by an expert contributor and proposes an innovative financial product or service designed to bolster emergency savings among low-asset families. This collection also offers readers insights into the role of emergency savings and mechanisms to facilitate savings behaviors, and raises critical questions of the scale, institutional capacity, sustainability, accessibility, and effectiveness of existing programs.

This textbook provides an introduction to environmental finance and investments. The current situation raises fundamental questions that this book aims to address. Under which conditions could carbon pricing schemes contribute to a significant decrease in emissions? What are the new investment strategies that the Kyoto Protocol and the emerging carbon pricing schemes around the world should promote? In the context of carbon regulation through emission trading schemes, what is the trade-off between production, technological changes, and pollution? What is the nature of the relation between economic growth and the environment? This book intends to provide students and practitioners with the knowledge and the theoretical tools necessary to answer these and other related questions in the context of the so-called environmental finance theory. This is a new research strand that investigates the economic, financial, and managerial impacts of carbon pricing policies.

Askari and Krichene provide a comprehensive background for recent international financial crises rapid expansion of interest-bearing debt and monetary expansion though the fractional reserve banking system. In this context, the authors provide an analysis of the experience and issues associated with international payments systems the various forms of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods system and the present system of flexible exchange rates. The authors go on to examine the case for fixed exchange rates (gold standard and other interesting variations) anchored in Islamic finance. The message of this book is that the gold standard could provide a solution for addressing international financial instability if and only if it is anchored in 100% reserve banking, which is an essential pillar of Islamic finance.

For thousands of years, those who controlled and monitored society’s finances–accountants–were often the most powerful, respected, and influential members of the community. From the collectors at communal granaries in the ancient Middle East to the scribes who monitored Queen Victoria’s Exchequer, the accountant’s role has been to preserve the integrity of financial systems.

In the United States, twentieth-century accountants played a vital role in shaping the transparency of U.S. capital markets, counseling the Allies on financial matters in both world wars, advising Congress on the creation of the federal income tax, and inventing the concept of the gross national product.

Yet by 2003, the reputation of the public accountant was in tatters. How did the accounting profession in America squander its legacy of public service? What happened to the accountants that presidents, senators, and captains of industry turned to for advice? Why did auditors stop looking for fraud? How did this once revered profession find itself in this unlikely and humiliating state?

The sharp realities of financial globalization become clear during crises, when winners and losers emerge. Crises usher in short- and long-term changes to the status quo, and everyone agrees that learning from crises is a top priority. "The Evidence and Impact of Financial Globalization" devotes separate articles to specific crises, the conditions that cause them, and the longstanding arrangements devised to address them. While other books and journal articles treat these subjects in isolation, this volume presents a wide-ranging, consistent, yet varied specificity. Substantial, authoritative, and useful, these articles provide material unavailable elsewhere.

Substantial articles by top scholars sets this volume apart from other information sources Rapidly developing subjects will interest readers well into the future Reader demand and lack of competitors underline the high value of these reference works"

Options have been traded for hundreds of years, but investment decisions were based on gut feelings until the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the Black-Scholes options pricing model in 1973 ushered in the era of the "quants." Wall Street would never be the same.

In "Pricing the Future," financial economist George G. Szpiro tells the fascinating stories of the pioneers of mathematical finance who conducted the search for the elusive options pricing formula. From the broker's assistant who published the first mathematical explanation of financial markets to Albert Einstein and other scientists who looked for a way to explain the movement of atoms and molecules, "Pricing the Future" retraces the historical and intellectual developments that ultimately led to the widespread use of mathematical models to drive investment strategies on Wall Street.

Beginning with an original historical vision of financialization in human history, this volume then continues with a rich set of contemporary ethnographic case studies from Europe, Asia and Africa. Authors explore the ways in which finance inserts itself into relationships of class and kinship, how it adapts to non-Western religious traditions, and how it reconfigures legal and ecological dimensions of social organization, and urban social relations in general. Central themes include the indebtedness of individuals and households, the impact of digital technologies, the struggle for housing, financial education, and political contestation.