An understanding of the behaviour of financial assets and the evolution of economies has never been as important as today. This book looks at these complex systems from the perspective of the physicist. So called 'econophysics' and its application to finance has made great strides in recent years. Less emphasis has been placed on the broader subject of macroeconomics and many economics students are still taught traditional neo-classical economics. The reader is given a general primer in statistical physics, probability theory, and use of correlation functions. Much of the mathematics that is developed is frequently no longer included in undergraduate physics courses. The statistical physics of Boltzmann and Gibbs is one of the oldest disciplines within physics and it can be argued that it was first applied to ensembles of molecules as opposed to being applied to social agents only by way of historical accident. The authors argue by analogy that the theory can be applied directly to economic systems comprising assemblies of interacting agents. The necessary tools and mathematics are developed in a clear and concise manner. The body of work, now termed econophysics, is then developed. The authors show where traditional methods break down and show how the probability distributions and correlation functions can be properly understood using high frequency data. Recent work by the physics community on risk and market crashes are discussed together with new work on betting markets as well as studies of speculative peaks that occur in housing markets. The second half of the book continues the empirical approach showing how by analogy with thermodynamics, a self-consistent attack can be made on macroeconomics. This leads naturally to economic production functions being equated to entropy functions - a new concept for economists. Issues relating to non-equilibrium naturally arise during the development and application of this approach to economics. These are discussed in the context of superstatistics and adiabatic processes. As a result it does seem ultimately possible to reconcile the approach with non-equilibrium systems, and the ideas are applied to study income and wealth distributions, which with their power law distribution functions have puzzled many researchers ever since Pareto discovered them over 100 years ago. This book takes a pedagogical approach to these topics and is aimed at final year undergraduate and beginning gradaute or post-graduate students in physics, economics, and business. However, the experienced researcher and quant should also find much of interest.

The growth of urban areas and population in middle and low income countries is a continuing trend. Urbanization expands as rural to urban migration offers better income opportunities in cities. This trend is both a source of development opportunities and challenges for the housing sector. On the one hand, housing is a large and growing market, and on the other, massive slums confirm the poor housing conditions in many developing countries. These adverse conditions mirror inadequate housing policies, inefficient or absent property registration, as well as limits to access to housing finance. Provision of affordable housing is therefore an important topic in the fight against poverty. This book focuses on solutions that improve the enabling environment for the poor in accessing housing finance. It explores how to develop and integrate housing finance into a sustainable financial system for developing countries and offers ways in which low-income families can obtain better access to housing finance. This book provides a conceptual framework for housing finance development and addresses practical solutions in the provision of housing finance and compares different approaches.

The theme of this volume is "Dealing with Volatility and Enhancing Performance". The lead chapter sets the theme by giving insight into using the Chicago Board Option Exchange Volatility Index (CBOE VIX) futures in hedging strategies for equity market investors (and hedge funds). During a time when there is much concern about the perceived volatility of global equity markets, the insights offered here could be reassuring as well as useful. The second chapter offers insights into the efficiency (or lack thereof) of attempts for forecast global earnings. Then, the third chapter offers new insights into an issue that has been important for many decades, but which promises to become more topical in the years to come. That is the question of when and why the people who make the business work should also be the owners. Remaining chapters offer further insights into recent trends in "in-house" mergers/acquisitions activity, purchases and sales of real options, project risk, electricity derivatives, corporate governance in Europe, and emerging markets.

The central theme of this study, first published in 1998, is that parametric change has expanded the autonomy of non-state actors, and has reduced the capability of governments to extract involuntary resources from their constituents. This change has profound consequences for world politics. This title will be of interest to students of Finance and Economics.

Financial market reform has focused chiefly on the threats to stability arising from the risky, uncontrolled activity of the leaders of financial institutions. Nevertheless, organized crime, white-collar crime, and corruption have a huge impact on financial systems worldwide and must also be confronted if true reform is to be achieved. A collection of articles written by experts in their fields of study, Financial Crimes: A Threat to Global Security spotlights the importance of addressing the problem of illegal financial activity as part of a greater comprehensive plan for reforming the financial sector. Drawn from the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) held in Vienna, the book explores the major themes discussed at this elite symposium. In the first section, the contributors examine changing concepts in security over the course of history and across nations. They discuss how an event in Austria led to the implementation of a new security philosophy that is now followed by the majority of the European Union. The book examines the diverse models of preventing security threats that have grown from that idea as well as the gradual expansion of the role of the security council of the United Nations. The next section analyzes the present state of security worldwide and examines the wide array of criminal activity that plagues the financial sector. Expert contributors reveal methods to identify certain types of behavior and criminals as well as efforts to combat illegal activity-including the role of the media. The final section investigates alternative approaches to preventing another worldwide financial disaster through investigative reporting, human factors analysis, legislative initiatives, and other methods. Filled with insight from international experts, the book highlights both the warning signs to illegal activity as well as the mos

Financial fraud, whether large or small is a persistent feature of the financial markets. If you scratch the surface of the investment world you'll find a continuous stream of major financial scandals which are almost unbelievable in the sheer scale of their subterfuge. The Con Men shines a spotlight on some of these gargantuan frauds from the last 25 years. It questions how these men did it, why they did it, how there were able to get away with it, proposes strategies and tactics so that the reader can avoid being swindled.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed significant developments in the structure, organization, and expansion of financial markets and opportunities for investment in Britain and its empire. But very little is known about how men and women engaged with these markets and with new opportunities for money-making. In what ways did the composition of personal fortunes alter in response to these developments? How did individuals make use of new financial opportunities to further their own priorities and ensure their families' well-being? What choices of securities did they make, and how did these reflect their attitudes to investment risk? What were the implications of a rapidly growing investor population for corporate governance and the regulation of markets? How significant is gender in understanding new patterns of wealth holding and investment?
This interdisciplinary book brings together a range of leading international scholars to answer these questions and to develop important new research agendas. Foremost among these is a concern for gender, with several of the chapters exploring the growing importance of women within investment markets. These findings open up dialogues between economic and financial historians with social, gender, and feminist historians, and add a significant new dimension to existing research on women's economic agency. The volume also breaks fresh ground by analysing aspects of wealth holding and finance in British colonial settings: Canada and Australia. Understanding the extent to which global financial processes shaped the economic lives of those on the 'periphery' as well as at the 'heart' of empire will offer new insights into the social and geographical diffusion of financial markets.

Critical Praise forThe Alchemy of Finance

"The Alchemy of Finance joins Reminiscences of a Stock Operator as a timeless instructional guide of the marketplace."
––Paul Tudor Jones
From the Foreword to the First Edition

"An extraordinary . . . inside look into the decision-making process of the most successful money manager of our time. Fantastic."
––The Wall Street Journal

"A breathtakingly brilliant book. Soros is one of the core of masters . . . who can actually begin to digest the astonishing complexity . . . of the game of finance in recent years."
––Esquire

"A seminal investment book . . . it should be read, underlined, and thought about page by page, concept by idea. . . . He’s the best pure investor ever . . . probably the finest analyst of the world in our time."
–– Barton M. Biggs
Director, BKF Capital Group, Inc.

Updated to include a new Preface and Introduction by Soros, and a Foreword by Paul A. Volcker

George Soros is unquestionably the most powerful and profitable investor in the world today. Dubbed by BusinessWeek as "The Man Who Moves Markets," Soros once made a billion dollars by betting that the British pound would be devalued. Soros is not merely a man of finance, but a thinker to reckon with as well. In The Alchemy of Finance, this extraordinary man reveals the investment strategies that have made him "a superstar among money managers"(The New York Times).

This text takes copulas and applies the methodology to mathematical finance. The authors explain copulas by describing their application to major topics such as asset pricing, risk management and credit risk analysis. They take financial problems such as the pricing of multi-variate derivatives and exotic contracts and risk management issues such as allocating capital among different desk and business lines. The intention is that the reader will be able to devise their own applications and answers to such problems by following the strategies illustrated throughout the book.

The New Economy Handbook will primarily serve reference users in business schools, economics departments, public and university libraries, special libraries, and institutions/agencies concerned with finance, trade, e-commerce, banking, and other regulatory, trade, and commercial activities. Secondary users will be business professionals and managers, as well as entrepreneurs, bankers, and others who need traditional economic information and data about new technology firms. Because of the scope of its table of contents, the book might well be used as a supplement to many courses.
The revolutions that brought about the New Economy are quietly embedded in familiar, old products, not necessarily ringing, beeping, and vibrating next to our skins. Why is the bulky, battery-operated e-book the new economy, while Lockheed-Martin's swooping F-16 is consigned to the Old Economy?
The information technology boom of the 1990s stoked a New Economy characterized by surging output per worker but with hard-to-measure and vulnerable underpinnings. Faster productivity is, of course, the key to higher living standards. The most important aspect of the New Economy might not, therefore, be the shift to high-tech industries, but the way that Information Technology improves the efficiency of all parts of the economy.
This collection of original essays offers the first thorough investigation of the New Economy. Its poignancy is even more apparent in the wake of the 1990s technology bubble. Articles share a format that encourages accessibilty, including an outline, glossary, and summary, and an extensive index adds utility. Written for students and scholars seeking authoritative data and perspectives.

An in-depth guide to understanding probability distributions and financial modeling for the purposes of investment management

In "Financial Models with Levy Processes and Volatility Clustering," the expert author team provides a framework to model the behavior of stock returns in both a univariate and a multivariate setting, providing you with practical applications to option pricing and portfolio management. They also explain the reasons for working with non-normal distribution in financial modeling and the best methodologies for employing it.

The book's framework includes the basics of probability distributions and explains the alpha-stable distribution and the tempered stable distribution. The authors also explore discrete time option pricing models, beginning with the classical normal model with volatility clustering to more recent models that consider both volatility clustering and heavy tails.Reviews the basics of probability distributionsAnalyzes a continuous time option pricing model (the so-called exponential Levy model)Defines a discrete time model with volatility clustering and how to price options using Monte Carlo methodsStudies two multivariate settings that are suitable to explain joint extreme events

"Financial Models with Levy Processes and Volatility Clustering" is a thorough guide to classical probability distribution methods and brand new methodologies for financial modeling.

This book provides readers with essential concepts from financial economics for an integrated study of the financial system and the real economy. It discusses how long-term market prices are determined and affected by population growth, technological progress and non-renewable resources. The meaning of market prices is examined from the perspective of households and from the perspective of firms. The book therefore connects different fields of finance, which usually focus only on either the households' side or the firms' side.

Also known as the Libor market model, the Brace-Gatarek-Musiela (BGM) model is becoming an industry standard for pricing interest rate derivatives. Written by one of its developers, Engineering BGM builds progressively from simple to more sophisticated versions of the BGM model, offering a range of methods that can be programmed into production code to suit readers' requirements. After introducing the standard lognormal flat BGM model, the book focuses on the shifted/displaced diffusion version. Using this version, the author develops basic ideas about construction, change of measure, correlation, calibration, simulation, timeslicing, pricing, delta hedging, barriers, callable exotics (Bermudans), and vega hedging. Subsequent chapters address cross-economy BGM, the adaptation of the BGM model to inflation, a simple tractable stochastic volatility version of BGM, and Brazilian options suitable for BGM analysis. An appendix provides notation and an extensive array of formulae. The straightforward presentation of various BGM models in this handy book will help promote a robust, safe, and stable environment for calibrating, simulating, pricing, and hedging interest rate instruments.

Nonprofits often struggle financially, overwhelmed by the need to muster a complex combination of income streams that range from grants and government funding to gifts-in-kind and volunteer labor. Financing Nonprofits draws upon a growing body of scholarship in economics and organizational theory to offer a conceptual framework for understanding this diverse mix of financing sources. By applying theory, readers can understand when a nonprofit organization should pursue particular sources of income and how it should manage its portfolio of income from different sources. Organized under the auspices of the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise, Financing Nonprofits argues that those who would manage nonprofit organizations must first develop a conceptual framework through which they can understand the complicated and fast-paced landscape surrounding nonprofit decision-making. It offers a piece by piece analysis of the many potential components of nonprofit operating income, including a detailed study on how to accumulate the capital needed for major infrastructure projects or endowments and an examination of how to maintain a healthy investment profile once sufficient capital exists. By melding theory with practice, Young and the other contributors to Financing Nonprofits have created a volume that will serve as a practical guide to financing strategies for executive directors, CFOs, and board members of nonprofit organizations in a wide variety of fields; as a text for graduate students in nonprofit finance; and as a source of ideas for researchers to continue to probe and illuminate the many subtle issues associated with finding the right mix of resources to support the essential work of nonprofit organizations in our society.

Guide to Optimal Operational Risk and Basel II presents the key aspects of operational risk management that are also aligned with the Basel II requirements. This volume provides detailed guidance for the design and implementation of an efficient operational risk management system. It contains all elements of assessment, including operational risk identification, measurement, modeling, and monitoring analysis, along with evaluation analysis and the estimation of capital requirements. The authors also address the managing and controlling of operational risks including operational risk profiling, risk optimization, cost & optimal resource allocation, decision-making, and design of optimal risk policies. Divided into four parts, this book begins by introducing the idea of operational risks and how they affect financial organizations. This section also focuses on the main aspects of managing operational risks. The second part focuses on the requirements of an operational risk management framework according to the Basel II Accord. The third part focuses on all stages of operational risk assessment, and the fourth part focuses on the control and management stages. All of these stages combine to implement efficient and optimal operational risk management systems.

The lion's share of smartphones, computers, televisions, semiconductor devices, and other electronics goods is made in East Asia. Final electronics goods are assembled in China, and sophisticated parts and components (P&C) such as semiconductor chips, image sensors, and ceramic filters in upstream Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. How did Asia become the center of electronics manufacturing? How did learning take place that allowed Asian workers to produce cutting-edge products? Are there lessons for countries like the US that seek to reshore manufacturing of semiconductors, flat-panel displays, and related products? This Element addresses these issues.

This book brings together a set of analytical and empirical essays aimed at understanding inclusive finance in emerging markets focusing on Asia. Despite the significant policy interest in the issue of financial inclusion in the Asian market, there is a dearth of academic literature on the topic. This book fills this gap by being the first of its kind to address the relevant issues and policy concerns relating to the availability and affordability of financial services in this rapidly emerging geopolitical area. The book features a mixture of empirical and case study oriented essays, informed by data, literature and policy analysis that will be useful for both the academics and the policy makers in the region interested in the subject. Countries highlighted in the essays assessing financial inclusivity include Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.

During the last decade, financial models based on jump processes have acquired increasing popularity in risk management and option pricing applications. Much has been published on the subject, but the technical nature of most papers makes them difficult for nonspecialists to understand, and the mathematical tools required for applications can be intimidating. Potential end users often get the impression that jump and Lévy processes are beyond their reach.

Financial Modelling with Jump Processes demonstrates that this is not so. It provides a self-contained overview of the theoretical, numerical, and empirical aspects of using jump processes in financial modeling, and does so in terms well within the grasp of nonspecialists. With clear-sighted explanations, the authors motivate the use of the various mathematical tools used in the modelling process, and while giving an intuitive understanding of proofs, provide precise mathematical statements of the results. They illustrate the mathematical concepts with many numerical and empirical examples and provide the details of numerical implementation of pricing and calibration algorithms.

This book clearly shows that the concepts and tools necessary for understanding and implementing these models can be much more accessible and intuitive that those involved in the Black Scholes and diffusion models. If you have even a basic familiarity with quantitative methods in finance, Financial Modelling with Jump Processes will give you a valuable new set of tools for modelling market fluctuations.

Whether you're a full-time trader looking to make a living or a part-time trader looking to make some extra money, the foreign exchange (forex) market has what you desire--the potential to make sizeable profits and 24/7 accessibility.

But to make it in today's forex market, you need more than a firm understanding of the tools and techniques of this discipline. You need the guidance of someone who has participated, and prevailed, in this type of fast-paced environment.

Raghee Horner has successfully traded in the forex market for over a decade, and now, in Thirty Days of Forex Trading, she shares her experiences in this field by chronicling one full month of trading real money. First, Horner introduces you to the tools of the forex trade, and then she moves on to show you exactly what she does, day after day, to find potentially profitable opportunities in the forex market.

Part instructional guide, part trading journal, Thirty Days of Forex Trading will show you--through Horner's firsthand examples--how to enter the forex market with confidence and exit with profits.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 has highlighted the resilience of the financial markets and broader economies from the developing world. This outcome owes much to the bitter experience and economic strategies developed and implemented at both a national and international level following the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998. The objective of this volume is to investigate and assess the impact and response to the crisis from an emerging markets perspective including asset pricing, contagion, financial intermediation, market structure and regulation. Our hope is that the assembled papers will offer clear insights into the complex financial arrangements that now link emerging and developed financial markets in the current economic environment. The volume spans four dimensions: first, a series of background studies offer explanations of the causes and impacts of the crisis on emerging markets more generally; then, implications are considered. The third and final sections provide insights from regional and country-specific perspectives.

Islamic Capital Markets: A Comparative Approach (2nd Edition) looks at the similarities and differences between Islamic capital markets and conventional capital markets. The book explains each topic from both the conventional and the Islamic perspective, offering a full understanding of Islamic capital markets, processes, and instruments. In addition to a full explanation of Islamic products, the book also ensures a holistic understanding of the dual markets within which Islamic capital markets operate.Ideal for both students and current practitioners, the second edition of the highly successful Islamic Capital Markets: A Comparative Approach fills a large gap in the current literature on the subject, featuring case studies from Malaysia, Indonesia, Europe, and the Middle East. One of the few comprehensive, dedicated guides to the subject available, the book offers comprehensive and in-depth insights on the topic of Islamic finance for students and professionals alike.

This handbook provides the first comprehensive overview of the fast-evolving alternative finance space and makes a timely and in-depth contribution to the literature in this area. Bringing together expert contributions in the field from both practitioners and academics, in one of the most dynamic parts of the financial sector, it provides a solid reference for this exciting discipline. Divided into six parts, Section 1 presents a high-level overview of the technologically-enabled finance space. It also offers a historical perspective on technological finance models and outlines different business models. Section 2 analyses digital currencies including guides to bitcoins, other cryptocurrencies, and blockchains. Section 3 addresses alternative payment systems such as digital money and asset tokenization. Section 4 deals with crowdfunding models from both a theoretical perspective and from a regulatory perspective. Section 5 discusses data-driven business models and includes a discussion of neural networks and deep learning. Finally, Section 6 discusses welfare implications of the technological finance revolution. This collection highlights the most current developments to date and the state-of-the-art in alternative finance, while also indicating areas of further potential. Acting as a roadmap for future research in this innovative and promising area of finance, this handbook is a solid reference work for academics and students whilst also appealing to industry practitioners, businesses and policy-makers.

The study of heavy-tailed distributions allows researchers to represent phenomena that occasionally exhibit very large deviations from the mean. The dynamics underlying these phenomena is an interesting theoretical subject, but the study of their statistical properties is in itself a very useful endeavor from the point of view of managing assets and controlling risk. In this book, the authors are primarily concerned with the statistical properties of heavy-tailed distributions and with the processes that exhibit jumps. A detailed overview with a Matlab implementation of heavy-tailed models applied in asset management and risk managements is presented. The book is not intended as a theoretical treatise on probability or statistics, but as a tool to understand the main concepts regarding heavy-tailed random variables and processes as applied to real-world applications in finance. Accordingly, the authors review approaches and methodologies whose realization will be useful for developing new methods for forecasting of financial variables where extreme events are not treated as anomalies, but as intrinsic parts of the economic process.

This book discusses the role of capital markets and investment banking in Nigeria, the largest frontier market economy in the world by both population size and gross domestic product. Offering a systematic framework combining conceptual principles with real practice, the book enables the reader to gain useful insight into how capital markets and investment banking work in the real world of a frontier market. The book provides a synopsis of the economic attractiveness, financial systems intermediation and capital markets, as well as the regulatory framework within a frontier market. It explores capital raising through equity and underwriting and private equity, paying particular attention to putting capital to work on mergers and acquisitions, project and infrastructure finance and real estate finance. Furthermore, it analyses asset management, pension industry and securities trading in a frontier market. The authors use detailed case studies from Nigeria to illustrate the operations of investment banking in frontier markets. The cases, tables and charts serve as useful illustrations of the topics under discussion. With the authors' combined experience of more than 50 years as economists, finance and investment professionals and in executive leadership positions in the financial services industry, this book will interest the academic community, professionals in the financial industry, retail and institutional investors interested in frontier markets, development practitioners in international organizations and policy makers including securities and capital market regulators.

This introductory text is devoted to exposing the underlying nature of price formation in financial markets as a predominantly sociological phenomenon that relates individual decision-making to emergent and co-evolving social and financial structures.

Two different levels of this sociological influence are considered: First, we examine how price formation results from the social dynamics of interacting individuals, where interaction occurs either through the price or by direct communication. Then the same processes are revisited and examined at the level of larger groups of individuals.

In this book, models of both levels of socio-finance are presented, and it is shown, in particular, how complexity theory provides the conceptual and methodological tools needed to understand and describe such phenomena. Accordingly, readers are first given a broad introduction to the standard economic theory of rational financial markets and will come to understand its shortcomings with the help of concrete examples. Complexity theory is then introduced in order to properly account for behavioral decision-making and match the observed market dynamics.

This book is conceived as a primer for newcomers to the field, as well as for practitioners seeking new insights into the field of complexity science applied to socio-economic systems in general, and financial markets and price formation in particular.