This is the first book to put together Asia and the developed world in the subprime crisis context and to combine macro and micro analysis to draw lessons from it. The crisis has valuable lessons for the dergulation of China's insurance industry, which is seen as the 'goldmine' in the future of global financial development.

The current crisis is emerging as the most severe downturn since the Great Depression. This book examines its cause, the efforts to contain the crisis and proposes a cure that will limit the risk that such crises could recur in the future.

This volume is available individually, or as part of the 7 volume set "Emergence of International Business 1200-1800" (0-415-19072-X; $910.00/Y [Can. $1365.00/Y]).

Very often, we associate the dawn of modern financial theory with Harry Markowitz who in the 1950s introduced the formal mathematics of probability theory to the problem of managing risk in an asset portfolio. The 1970s saw the advent of formal models for pricing options and other derivative contracts, whose primary purpose was also financial risk management and hedging. But events in the 1990s made it clear that effective risk management is a critical element for success, and indeed, for long term survival, not only for financial institutions, but also for industrial firms, and even for nonprofit organizations and governmental bodies. These recent events vividly show that the world is filled with all manner of risks, and so risk management must extend far beyond the use of standard derivative instruments in routine hedging applications. The articles in this volume cover two broad themes. One theme emphasizes methods for identifying, modeling, and hedging specific types of financial and business risks. Articles in this category consider the technology of risk measurement, such as Value at Risk and extreme value theory; new classes of risk, such as liquidity risk; new financial instruments and markets for risk management, such as derivative contracts based on weather and on catastrophic insurance risks; and finally, credit risk, which has become one of the most important areas of practical interest for risk management. The second theme stresses risk management from the perspective of the firm and the financial system as a whole. Articles in this category analyze risk management in the international arena, including payment and settlement risks and sovereign risk pricing, risk management from the regulator's viewpoint, and risk management for financial institutions. The articles in this volume examine the "State of the Art" in risk management from the standpoint of academic researchers, market analysts and practitioners, and government observers.

The book covers alternative lending using the emergence of Debt Funds in the EU as a case study. The book explores the risks that they can pose to financial stability, and the regulatory and supervisory tools available to mitigate these risks. Through this analysis, the book uncovers the risks and potential risk mitigation tools that can be applied to the alternative lenders-including debt funds and other potential alternative lenders. After identifying the reasons behind the growth of alternative lenders (using as example the assets of Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) and in particular debt funds) and the simultaneous decrease of the banks' assets, the book analyses the systemic importance of the alternative lenders and the risk channels through which the systemic risk can spread to the banking sector and the financial system. Then, the book deals with the financial innovation-market failure theory and demonstrates that financial innovations (e.g. debt funds, securitisations) can cause market failures, resulting in regulatory interventions. Of interest to banking and financial regulation academics, researchers, and practitioners this book analyses the regulatory provisions in place for both credit institutions and debt funds, including the Basel Accords, the Capital Requirements Directives and Regulations, and the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) and its implementation in various EU jurisdictions, before offering a proposal for a new three-defensive framework applicable to debt funds and to other potential alternative lenders.

Includes traditional elements of financial econometrics but is not yet another volume in econometrics.

Discusses statistical and probability techniques commonly used in quantitative finance.

The reader will be able to explore more complex structures without getting inundated with the underlying mathematics.

This book gives a self-contained, intuitive overview of some of the most important topics of finance, such as investment risk, market pricing and market efficiency, arbitrage, hedging, and the pricing and application of financial derivatives. It provides a first-principles introduction to the relevant material and concepts, emphasising intuition. Financial terminology, and the understanding implicit therein, is carefully introduced. The books starts with finance in the most general terms, and gradually specialises to investment theory and then derivatives. This book is tailor-made for readers new to finance, such as graduate students entering or interested in finance, or financial practitioners moving to a more quantitative role.

This textbook first introduces the reader to return measurement and then goes on to compare the time-weighted rate of return (TWR) with the money-weighted rate of return (MWR). To emphasize the importance of risk in conjunction with return, different tracking errors are analyzed and ex-post versus ex-ante risk figures are compared. The author then proceeds to modern portfolio theory (MPT) and illustrates how the constraints interfere substantially in the construction of optimized portfolios. As a conclusion, the book provides the reader with all the essential aspects of investment controlling.

This edited collection addresses the major issues encountered in the calculation of economic damages to individuals in civil litigation. In federal and state courts in the United States, as well as in other nations, when one party sues another, the suing party is required not only to prove that the harm was, indeed, caused by the other party, but also to claim and demonstrate that a specified dollar value represents just compensation for the harm. Forensic economists are often called upon to evaluate, measure, and opine on the degree of economic loss that is alleged to have occurred. Aimed at both practitioners and theorists, the original articles and essays in the edited collection are written by nationally recognized and widely published forensic experts. Its strength is in showcasing theories, methods, and measurements as they differ in a variety of cases, and in its review of the forensic economics literature developed over the past thirty years. Readers will find informative discussions of topics such as establishing earnings capacity for both adults and infants, worklife probability, personal consumption deductions, taxation as treated in federal and state courts, valuing fringe benefits, discounting theory and practice, the effects of the Affordable Care Act, the valuation of personal services, wrongful discharge, hedonics, effective communication by the expert witness, and ethical issues. The volume also covers surveys of the views of practicing forensic economists, the connection between law and forensic economics, alternatives to litigation in the form of VCF-like schedules, and key differences among nations in measuring economic damages.

This book explains how investor behavior, from mental accounting to the combustible interplay of hope and fear, affects financial economics. The transformation of portfolio theory begins with the identification of anomalies. Gaps in perception and behavioral departures from rationality spur momentum, irrational exuberance, and speculative bubbles. Behavioral accounting undermines the rational premises of mathematical finance. Assets and portfolios are imbued with "affect." Positive and negative emotions warp investment decisions. Whether hedging against intertemporal changes in their ability to bear risk or climbing a psychological hierarchy of needs, investors arrange their portfolios and financial affairs according to emotions and perceptions. Risk aversion and life-cycle theories of consumption provide possible solutions to the equity premium puzzle, an iconic financial mystery. Prospect theory has questioned the cogency of the efficient capital markets hypothesis. Behavioral portfolio theory arises from a psychological account of security, potential, and aspiration.

This book examines the crisis at the famous insurance market, Lloyd's of London, during the late twentieth century, which nearly destroyed the 300-year-old institution. While rapid structural change resulting from system collapse is less common in insurance than in the history of other financial services, one exception was the Lloyd's crisis. Hitherto, explanations of the crisis have focused on the effects of catastrophic losses and poor governance. By drawing on contemporary accounts of the crisis, the author constructs the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the public and political response. The book applies theoretical concepts from behavioural economics and economic psychology to argue that multiple delusions of competence were at work both within and outside the Lloyd's market. Arrogance, elitism and defence of vested interests comprised endogenous elements of the crisis. Entrenched ideas about the virtues of self-regulation and faith in insider experts also played a role. The result was a misdiagnosis by both insiders and politicians of what ailed Lloyd's and a series of reforms that failed to address the underlying causes of its disease. This book offers a salutary lesson from recent history about the importance of the transparency, accountability and effective monitoring of financial institutions. It is of interest to academics and students of economic and financial history, business, insurance, political economy and history.

Colin Read explores the intricacies of modern financial markets and explains in easy to understand terms the reasons for global financial unrest arising from the sub-prime mortgage crisis and global economic meltdowns. He proposes that a well educated economic citizen is our most effective tool to prevent future financial collapses, like the one witnessed in 2007-2008. He walks us through a number of topics in economics, and connects these topics to real world financial problems. He then leaves us with a series of recommendations that can strengthen the economy and leave it less prone to manipulation. Throughout, he describes the role of globalization and the expected profound impact countries like India and China will have on our economic future.

This book scrutinizes global financial flows and stocks, both financial assets and liabilities and their impact on the global balance of economic power, especially as they affect the largest and fastest-growing countries in both the developed and the developing world. It shows how financial flows can promote economic growth and financial capital can serve as a tool for higher growth rates in emerging market economies, but also that the huge amounts of financial capital currently being spent in advanced countries to promote economic growth has produced at best very modest improvements and in some cases negative results. The book opens with an analysis of global capital flows and their concentration. It then offers an analysis of rates of relative economic growth (or decline). The final section deals with the (decreasing) economic efficiency of financial flows and the (un)sustainability of economic growth, especially during the past eight years of economic recovery. Tackling one of the most serious problems in the global economy today, this book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of capital markets, financial crisis, and financial economics.

Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit is a groundbreaking work of economic theory, distinguishing between risk, which is by nature measurable and quantifiable, and uncertainty, which can be neither be measured nor quantified. We begin with an analysis of the functions of profit, risk and uncertainty in the economy. Frank H. Knight introduces his work with a discussion on profit and how there are conflicts about its nature between various economic theorists. As the title implies, the author's chief concern is the interplay between making a profit, incurring risk, and determining if there is uncertainty. Risks are different from uncertainty in that they can be measured and protected against. For example a location chosen for a factory or farm may have a measured risk of flooding in a given year. Businesses, insurers and investors alike can be made aware of this, and behave according to the quantified risk.

This book presents the state-of-the-art applications of machine learning in the finance domain with a focus on financial product modeling, which aims to advance the model performance and minimize risk and uncertainty. It provides both practical and managerial implications of financial and managerial decision support systems which capture a broad range of financial data traits. It also serves as a guide for the implementation of risk-adjusted financial product pricing systems, while adding a significant supplement to the financial literacy of the investigated study. The book covers advanced machine learning techniques, such as Support Vector Machine, Neural Networks, Random Forest, K-Nearest Neighbors, Extreme Learning Machine, Deep Learning Approaches, and their application to finance datasets. It also leverages real-world financial instances to practice business product modeling and data analysis. Software code, such as MATLAB, Python and/or R including datasets within a broad range of financial domain are included for more rigorous practice. The book primarily aims at providing graduate students and researchers with a roadmap for financial data analysis. It is also intended for a broad audience, including academics, professional financial analysts, and policy-makers who are involved in forecasting, modeling, trading, risk management, economics, credit risk, and portfolio management.

Explores challenges for developing and emerging economies for enhancing green financing for sustainable, low-carbon investment, looking at Indonesia. Based on surveys in the Indonesian banking and corporate sectors and expert interviews, it devises innovative policy recommendations to develop a framework conducive to fostering green investments.

Originally published in 2006, this book examines the collapse of the Enron Corp. and other financial scandals that arose in the wake of the market downturn in 2000. Part 1 reviews the market book and bust that preceded Enron's collapse. It then describes the growth of Enron and the events that led to its sensational failure. Part 2 examines the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission's full disclosure system in corporate governance and the role of accountants in that system. Part 3 reviews the meltdown in the telecoms sector and the accounting scandals that emerged. Part 4 traces the remarkable market recovery that followed the financial scandals and the resumption of the growth of finance in America.

Practitioners and researchers who have handled financial market data know that asset returns do not behave according to the bell-shaped curve, associated with the Gaussian or normal distribution. Indeed, the use of Gaussian models when the asset return distributions are not normal could lead to a wrong choice of portfolio, the underestimation of extreme losses or mispriced derivative products. Consequently, non-Gaussian models and models based on processes with jumps, are gaining popularity among financial market practitioners.

Non-Gaussian distributions are the key theme of this book which addresses the causes and consequences of non-normality and time dependency in both asset returns and option prices. One of the main aims is to bridge the gap between the theoretical developments and the practical implementations of what many users and researchers perceive as "sophisticated" models or black boxes. 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, such as exchange and interest rates.

The authors have taken care to make the material accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of statistics, calculus and probability, while at the same time preserving the mathematical rigor and complexity of the original models.

This book will be an essential reference for practitioners in the finance industry, especially those responsible for managing portfolios and monitoring financial risk, but it will also be useful for mathematicians who want to knowmore about how their mathematical tools are applied in finance, and as a text for advanced courses in empirical finance; financial econometrics and financial derivatives.

This book examines financial vulnerability: a state in which a person or household cannot absorb any substantial spending or negative income shock without substantial financial and ultimately broader harm such as job loss, emotional harm, or mental illness. The focus of the book is on the experiences of low- income and modest income Canadian families - families which, by virtue of being in the lower income brackets, are particularly at risk of experiencing financial hardship. Looking at vulnerability from a conceptual and empirical lens, this book offers a framework to better understand the complex and interdependent ways in which financial vulnerability emerge and can be addressed. By locating its analysis of individual and household financial management in wider community, cultural, and economic contexts, this book seeks to offer holistic policy recommendations to reduce financial vulnerability, with implications that go beyond Canada and to other developed countries.

Read examines probability, risk, and uncertainty through the contributions of John von Neumann, Leonard Jimmie Savage, Kenneth Arrow and Harry Markowitz. These Portfolio Theorists provided us with a dramatic leap forward in our understanding of and insights into financial rewards under risk and uncertainty.

Asymptotic analysis of stochastic stock price models is the central topic of the present volume. Special examples of such models are stochastic volatility models, that have been developed as an answer to certain imperfections in a celebrated Black-Scholes model of option pricing. In a stock price model with stochastic volatility, the random behavior of the volatility is described by a stochastic process. For instance, in the Hull-White model the volatility process is a geometric Brownian motion, the Stein-Stein model uses an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process as the stochastic volatility, and in the Heston model a Cox-Ingersoll-Ross process governs the behavior of the volatility. One of the author's main goals is to provide sharp asymptotic formulas with error estimates for distribution densities of stock prices, option pricing functions, and implied volatilities in various stochastic volatility models. The author also establishes sharp asymptotic formulas for the implied volatility at extreme strikes in general stochastic stock price models. The present volume is addressed to researchers and graduate students working in the area of financial mathematics, analysis, or probability theory. The reader is expected to be familiar with elements of classical analysis, stochastic analysis and probability theory.

This book focuses on traditional fields of business studies and economics and how digitalization has affected them. It provides an overview about the lessons learned from academic research and highlights implications for practitioners. Digitalization has not only changed the ways business administration and economics are taught, but also the substance at the core of the two disciplines. Chapters from expert contributors define and carefully evaluate the developments that have occurred over the last decades. The authors further provide an assessment of how industry branches have adapted and in which form regulators have engaged. Attention is given to the theoretical and empirical findings from recent scholarly literature. Furthermore, the authors provide some novel insights from their own research at the University of Bremen. This book appeals to business administration, economics, and entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners alike.