This book reveals all that can potentially happen when a private company takes over a local water supply system, both the good and the bad. Backed by real life stories of water privatization in action, author Manuel Schiffler presents a nuanced picture free of spin or fear mongering. Inside, readers will find a detailed analysis of the multiple forms of water privatization, from the outright sale of companies to various forms of public-private partnerships. After covering their respective strengths and weaknesses, it then compares them to purely publicly managed water utilities. The book examines the privatization and the public management of water and sewer utilities in twelve countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Philippines, Cambodia, Egypt, Jordan, Uganda, Bolivia, Argentina and Cuba. Readers will come to understand how and why some utilities failed while others succeeded, including some that substantially increased access, became more efficient and improved service quality even in the poorest countries of the world. It is natural that a private company taking over a local water supply system causes both fear and worry for consumers. With the aid of solid empirical evidence, this book argues that who manages the system is only half the story. Rather, it is the corporate culture of the utilities and the political culture of where they operate that more often than not determines performance and how well a community is served.

This book is one of the first comprehensive works to fill the knowledge gap resulting from the limited number of empirical studies on interfirm networks. The in-depth empirical research presented here is based on a massive transaction relationship database of approximately 400,000 Japanese firms. This volume, unlike others, focuses on the role of interfirm networks in three different fields: (1) macroeconomic activities, (2) economic geography and firm dynamics, and (3) firm-bank relationships. The database for this work is constructed in collaboration with Japan's largest credit research company, Teikoku Data Bank, and covers a substantial portion of Japanese firms with information on firms' transaction partners, shareholders, financial institutions, and other attributes, including their locations and performance. Networks prevail in many aspects of economic activities and play a major role in explaining a wide variety of economic phenomena from business cycles to knowledge spillovers, which has motivated economists to produce a number of excellent works. In the policy arena, there has been a growing concern on the vulnerabilities of networks based on the casual observation that idiosyncratic shocks on firms can be amplified through inter-firm connections and leads to a systemic crisis. Typical examples are the manufacturing supply-chain networks in the automobile and electronics industries which propagated regionally concentrated shocks (the Great East Japan Earthquake and floods in Thailand in 2011) into global ones. An abundance of theoretical literature on the formation and functions of networks is available already. This book breaks new ground, however, and provides an excellent opportunity for the reader to gain a more integrated understanding of the role of networks in the economy. The Economics of Interfirm Networks will be of special interest to economists and practitioners seeking empirical and quantitative knowledge on interfirm and firm-bank networks.

An expert in securing grant money provides a clear, step-by-step course in grant writing that readers can "attend" from the comfort of their home or office—and proceed with at their own pace. Many organizations that desperately need financial support miss opportunities for funding for two reasons: They don't have the knowledge or resources to successfully pursue and win a grant or they are ignorant of the range of possibilities in private, federal, or state-sourced funds available to them. With the emergence of economic stimulus money intended to assist nonprofits and government agencies suffering in the poor economic conditions, grant-writing is now a more relevant skill than ever before. This text can provide a multitude of benefits, including training existing staff with no prior experience to successfully pursue grant money, saving the cost of hiring a full-time grant writer, and serving as a complete guide for experienced grant writers seeking new options and techniques in obtaining operational funding. Getting Your Share of the Pie: The Complete Guide to Finding Grants also reveals the author's in-depth knowledge about the specific attributes the funding agencies look for via a digest of actual conversations with their representatives.

Created by the experienced author team of Frank Fabozzi, Henry Davis, and Moorad Choudhry, "Introduction to Structured Finance" examines the essential elements of this discipline. It is a convenient reference guide--which covers all the important transaction types in one place--and an excellent opportunity to enhance your understanding of finance.

This book explores the process of policymaking and implementation in the finance, energy and security sectors in the United Arab Emirates. It looks at the role of informal advisory networks in a nascent private sector, federal politics, and historical ties in foreign relations.

This book focuses on forward lease sukuk, which is one of the most viable and dynamic Shari'ah-compliant instruments in the Islamic capital market. The idea of forward lease sukuk is to raise funds from non-existent assets whose subject matter does not exist at the time of the sukuk issuance. This book discusses the significant features of forward lease sukuk and demonstrates its vital contribution to project construction and manufacturing within the expanding field of Islamic finance.

Influenced by technological innovation, banks and their businesses are changing dramatically. This book explores the transformation and prospects of financial market institutions (banks, insurance companies, pension funds and microfinance organizations) in the context of the development of financial innovation, financial engineering and financial technologies, taking into account risks and new opportunities for development. It presents new approaches to the sustainable development of financial and credit institutions, taking into account the risk management and crisis management of their activities in the macro and microeconomic environment. Contributors from Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Ireland and Italy present their expert opinions on the practice of financial intermediaries in the conditions of economic transformation under the influence of the 4th Industrial Revolution and the Covid-19 pandemic. This book includes some of the key debates in this area including the genesis of financial markets in the paradigm of economic digitalization, the evolution of financial intermediaries from the classical model to the ecosystem, and the regulation of neo-banks. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners in various spheres of theoretical and empirical knowledge, including economics, finance and banking, who are interested in investigation of the complex of fundamental (international and domestic) trends in the development of financial intermediation in the globalized financial markets.

It's time to break through the constraints that keep you from having a richer life "Don't Get Mad, Get Rich "shows you how to choose a new, exciting direction and put yourself on the road to financial success. With more than forty years of successful moneymaking experience, financial adviser and entrepreneur Winston Allen shows you how to get from where you are to where you want to be by helping you develop a wealth-building mentality. By constructing this mind-set on a foundation of planning, smart risktaking, and emulating successful people, you'll discover that it is truly possible to secure your financial independence. Allen doesn't employ hard-to-understand financial terms or difficult concepts but instead offers a no-nonsense approach relevant to the average American worker. With his strategy, you will soon know how to: Create a vision, set goals, and develop plans Handle multiple careers Invest in yourself Find your niche Focus on wealth Recognize needs and seize opportunities In this period of globalization and outsourcing, "Don't Get Mad, Get Rich" is a must for everyone in the business world, empowering you and inspiring you to greater financial success. Learn how to survive and gain the financial security that you've always wanted to attain.

The Great Monetary Experiment designed and administered by the Federal Reserve under the Obama Administration unleashed strong irrational forces in global asset markets. The result was a 'monetary plague' which has attacked and corrupted the vital signalling function of financial market prices. This book analyses how quantitative easing caused a sequence of markets to become infected by asset price inflation. It explains how instead of bringing about a quick return to prosperity from the Great Recession, the monetary experiment failed in its basic purpose. Bringing about economic debilitation, major financial speculation, waves of mal-investment in particular areas, and a colossal boom in the private equity industry, the experiment instead produced monetary disorder. Brendan Brown puts the monetary experiment into a global and historical context, examining in particular Japanese 'folklore of deflation' and the Federal Reserve's first experiment of quantitative easing in the mid-1930s. The author couples analysis from the Austrian school of monetary economics and Chicago monetarism with insights from behavioral finance, and concludes with major proposals for the present and the future, including ideas for monetary reform in the United States, and suggestions for how investors can survive the current market 'plague'.

This book provides unique insights into the politics of finance and the socio-political relations which drive financial policymaking in Hong kong, Singapore, and Shanghai. While the existing literature in the field focuses mainly on economic explanations for financial centre development, this book fills a gap by focusing on the socio-political relations which underpin the financial policy-making process. Drawing on extensive interviews with senior policy-makers and financial sector professionals, the book describes how state-industry relations drive financial policy-making in three major financial hubs. Insights and policy recommendations drawn from these interviews will be particularly useful for policy-makers and financial sector professionals hoping to draw lessons from the successful development of the three leading Asian financial centres. Business and Politics in Asia's Key Financial Centres draws on public policy theoretical frameworks for its analytical basis. The three chapters focusing on the historical development of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai also provide a consolidated narrative with regard to the development of these three cities as leading financial centres, while also serving as independent case studies. Scholars focusing on policy processes and political factors that underpin financial sector development, as well as instructors and students of public policy, international political economy, and financial sector policy, will find this book useful for their research.

Asia'smiraculous recovery from the 1997 crisis ushered in unexpected transformations to its economies and financial sectors. Thereasonsmany Asian countries are growing above 6%, with double-digit growth for a year or two in-between, are investigated by this extensive research collection.The "Handbook of Asian Finance" covers the most interesting issues raised by these growth rates. From real estate prices and the effects of trading technologies for practitioners to tax evasion, market manipulation, and corporate governance issues, expert scholars analyze the ways that the region is performing. Offering broader and deeper coverage than other handbooks, the "Handbook of Asian Finance" explains what is going on in Asia today.
Devotes significant attention to the systematic risk created by banks exposure to links between real estate and other sectors Explores the implications implicit in the expansion of sovereign funds and the growth of the hedge fund and real estate fund management industries Investigates the innovations in technology that have ushered infaster capital flow and larger trading volumes"

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.

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.

This book examines the controversial issue of securitization in a global, historical context. It traces its origins and compares evidence of securitization across countries, linking differences to variations in legal, political, and cultural regimes. By incorporating the history and current status of securitization (including sources of value and risk) with alternative markets and future outlooks for the global market, Buchanan provides an overall assessment of the costs, benefits, and sustainability of securitization in the global economy, particularly in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The book also offers a roadmap for future research. As financial regulators around the world plan a sweeping overhaul of securitization markets with tough new rules designed to restore market confidence, it is essential to consider the global outlook for securitization.

Can one idea be worth a million dollars? Of course. But what is a million-dollar idea worth if it is poorly executed? In this ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting book, creative genius Joey Reiman presents a convincing argument for the value of raw ideas.

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.

The concept of 'performativity' has risen to prominence throughout the humanities. The rise of financial derivatives reflects the power of the performative sign in the economic sphere. As recent debates about gender identity show, the concept of performativity is also profoundly influential on people's personal lives. Although the autonomous power of representation has been studied in disciplines ranging from economics to poetics, however, it has not yet been evaluated in ethical terms. This book supplies that deficiency, providing an ethical critique of performative representation as it is manifested in semiotics, linguistics, philosophy, poetics, theology and economics. It constructs a moral criticism of the performative sign in two ways: first, by identifying its rise to power as a single phenomenon manifested in various different areas; and second, by locating efficacious representation in its historical context, thus connecting it to idolatry, magic, usury and similar performative signs. The book concludes by suggesting that earlier ethical critiques of efficacious representation might be revived in our own postmodern era.

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.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have faced serious financial problems and have been looking to financial institutions and governments for solutions and new proposals to address these issues. This book examines the new challenge in which firms receive sustainable funding that is in alignment with the company's spending capacity. The purpose of this book is to examine the main theoretical issues and practices regarding entrepreneurship and finance and their impact on performance, innovation and economic growth. It analyzes the fundamental aspects of entrepreneurship and studies ways in which financial institutions can better fulfill their primary function of feeding capital to businesses and the economy as a whole. Entrepreneurship and finance are fundamental to achieving success in economic and social activities. SMEs' existence and development depend on the initiatives of entrepreneurship and access to resources, especially those of a financial nature. During the recent economic crisis, several new financing instruments have appeared, especially with structures designed for helping SMEs make their way out of the recession. This book explores some of these tools in various global economies, such as France and Spain, providing an international, multidimensional perspective.

This book presents a broad range of empirical research papers covering key issues in development finance. Despite having gained significant momentum in Africa and other emerging economies, textbooks and research publications on development finance are still very limited. This book shines a light on the main focal areas of the international 'finance for development' agenda and outlines innovative approaches to enhance economic growth and development finance to contribute towards realizing global sustainable development goals. Chapters from expert contributors cover topics such as domestic resource mobilization, debt relief, microfinance, financial sustainability, tax buoyancy, Foreign Direct Investment, foreign capital flows, and labour productivity. This book serves as a valuable reference tool for researchers, students and practitioners in this field.

This book examines whether Islamic finance and Islamic economics is challenging the orthodoxy of the money markets. Can ethical finance combined with the prohibition on interest and speculation really work in the global economy? With a political economy approach, the book explores how the industry has grown in modern times - from a short-lived bank in an Egyptian city in the 1960s through to a global industry that is today valued at US$2.05 trillion. From the revelation as articulated by the Prophet Muhammed in the seventh century through to the gleaming 21st century skyscrapers of Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, the book covers the end of European colonialism, the controversial utterances of self-styled religious leaders, the impact of Islamophobia, and the efforts to end poverty through Islamic microfinance. The book uncovers an industry that is both profitable and changing the face of contemporary capitalism.