In 1958 an academic paper on corporate finance written by two professors (Merton Miller and Frances Modigliani, who were later awarded the Nobel prize for their research efforts) was published in The American Economic Review. One prime conclusion of their paper was that the exact form of a firm's capital structure did not affect the firm's value.

Later papers by the same two authors and by many others modified the assumptions and changed this conclusion. We now think that capital structure decisions do affect a firm's value and corporate managers should understand better the financing alternatives that are available.

One of the most important financial decisions is the decision to buy or lease assets. The leasing industry is large and getting larger. Unfortunately, it is very easy for a firm to evaluate incorrectly lease alternatives (see Chapter 12).

The capital structure decision is one of the three most important financial decisions that management make (the distribution of earnings and the capital budgeting decisions are the other two contenders). Managers should increase their understanding of capital structure alternatives and remember that choosing the best capital structure is an art and not an exact simple calculation. But applying the art can be improved with understanding.

Mathematical finance has grown into a huge area of research which requires a large number of sophisticated mathematical tools. This book simultaneously introduces the financial methodology and the relevant mathematical tools in a style that is mathematically rigorous and yet accessible to practitioners and mathematicians alike. It interlaces financial concepts such as arbitrage opportunities, admissible strategies, contingent claims, option pricing and default risk with the mathematical theory of Brownian motion, diffusion processes, and Levy processes. The first half of the book is devoted to continuous path processes whereas the second half deals with discontinuous processes.

The extensive bibliography comprises a wealth of important references and the author index enables readers quickly to locate where the reference is cited within the book, making this volume an invaluable tool both for students and for those at the forefront of research and practice."

Written by an experienced risk manager, this innovative new book explores the core concepts of risk management, including in-depth coverage of its scope, rationale, and practical applications. In addition to being fundamentally important to risk managers, this text will also be invaluable to senior executives, directors, regulators, and capital markets professionals. Students, lay readers, and others interested in finance will find a vast subject made engaging and accessible. Written with unusual clarity, "The Shape of Risk" makes use of graphics, case studies, and questions. The author encourages readers to develop their own intuition and judgment for identifying and managing risk. This is an excellent starting point for a new generation of readers who increasingly need a both practical and conceptual understanding of risk management.

This book asks a fundamental question, that is, whether "somebody in charge" could have prevented or solved the problem leading up to our current financial crisis. This book explores and answers that question from a scholarly and academic economic viewpoint.

The main objective of Credit Risk: Modeling, Valuation and Hedging is to present a comprehensive survey of the past developments in the area of credit risk research, as well as to put forth the most recent advancements in this field. An important aspect of this text is that it attempts to bridge the gap between the mathematical theory of credit risk and the financial practice, which serves as the motivation for the mathematical modeling studied in the book. Mathematical developments are presented in a thorough manner and cover the structural (value-of-the-firm) and the reduced (intensity-based) approaches to credit risk modeling, applied both to single and to multiple defaults. In particular, the book offers a detailed study of various arbitrage-free models of defaultable term structures with several rating grades.

Sustainable Investing: Socio-Economic Impacts of Exchange-Traded Funds examines the social and economic effects of sustainable investing ETFs and their impacts on the global financial system. The book presents the key issues with regard to sustainable investing, discussing exchange-traded funds mechanisms and categories in comparison to competing investment funds. The book outlines the theoretical determinants of ETF markets development and the effects of their diffusion, both at the investor and firm levels, as well as financial system, entire economy, and society levels. The book presents various possible implementations of sustainable investing, and covers the methodological aspects of their identification and categorization. Hybrid investment products-such as exchange-traded funds that combine the investment features of mutual funds with the trading features of stocks-are one of the most rapidly growing categories of investment funds with their total global value reaching almost $5 trillion. The book examines the linkages between ETFs and the FinTech sector in the context of sustainable development, as well as global sustainable development policies in relation to their effects on the popularity of sustainable investing. The book concludes with a discussion of the significance for other entities that may be affected, such as policy makers and recipients of funds invested through sustainable investment strategies.

Building on the New Economic Foundation and Jubilee 2000's experience of making complex economic issues interesting and attractive to a mass audience, and publishing alternative reports, the Real World Economic Outlook provides an overview and reviews the global economy from a different and radical perspective. This first report looks at globalization and debt deflation.

In this comprehensive, step-by-step guide, author Sandy Bradley draws on her many years of experience as an organizer and auctioneer for nonprofits and arts organizations. Learn how to
- determine what kind of event is best for your organization
- find an ideal location
- hire an effective auctioneer
- develop a strategy to get your supporters to attend
- solicit donations of good and services to sell
- generate a catalog and bid sheets
- train volunteers so the event will run smoothly
- set up your event for maximum profits
- wrap up for guaranteed success at your next auction

In some circles, transparency has become a buzzword as organizations face increasing pressure from institutional shareholders and regulators, banks and other stakeholders needing to monitor financial conditions and managerial decisions more closely to protect their interests. The call for corporate transparency has also intensified for banks since the recent global financial crises and as a result of a series of egregious financial scandals. For this volume we have collected 12 original research papers dealing with various issues relating to transparency. This topic spans many disciplines beyond accounting and finance, intersecting economics, law and management, embracing sociology and political science, and offering opportunities for creative interdisciplinary research. We hope this volume is a useful one-stop reference for students and scholars as well as practitioners and policymakers interested in such work.

Avoid "Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves" by Finding Your Voice Growing up in a family with significant wealth or a family business can often feel like an exercise in silence. What should you ask? Whom should you ask? When? Is it ever right to talk about such things? The Voice of the Rising Generation speaks directly to those who find themselves living in that silence, the so-called "next generation." Great wealth or a family business can act like a "black hole," sapping the dreams and aspirations of future generations who feel that they can never measure up to the fortune's founder. This book, written by a psychologist, an educator, and a wise counselor who single-handedly changed the landscape of family wealth, diagnoses with economy and precision the cause of entitlement and dependency. It is not too much money or too few chores. It is the failure of rising generations to individuate, that is, to pursue their dreams, develop their resilience, and find their voice. Many books are addressed to parents and grandparents who worry about the effects of wealth on their descendants. Almost alone in the field, this book speaks directly to 20-, 30- and 40-somethings, encouraging them literally, giving them courage to meet the challenge of integrating wealth's power into their lives, rather than disappearing into the black hole. Readers will: * Come to understand the true causes of entitlement and dependency * Identify the psychological characteristics of the rising generation and the challenges proper to its development * Clarify their own dreams, work, and vocation * Navigate personal relationships and communication within the context of wealth * Recognize the special challenges faced when rising is delayed until mid-life. If you are a young person who is starting your life's journey and wondering about the effects of parental gifts, trusts, or a family business, this book will offer you questions, reflections, and lessons-learned to help you find your own way. If you are a parent, grandparent, elder, or mentor, The Voice of the Rising Generation can serve the young people in your life as a gift more precious than gold.

In light of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Lai examines whether East Asian economies converged onto the liberal market model by studying the evolution of the financial sectors of Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. This includes sectoral diversification, the nature of competition, and the regulatory and supervisory frameworks.

Victim, not instigator of the Asian Financial Crisis, Hong Kong was the only economy that succeeded in defending its fully convertible currency, indeed its entire financial system, against speculators, but the price it paid for success has been deep recession. Jao gives an objective, even-handed account and analysis. Without political or ideological preconsiderations he shows how Hong Kong authorities handled their intervention in the equity market in August 1998. Explaining the conventional wisdom that no fixed exchange rate regime can hold out for long against massive speculation. He goes further to show that Hong Kong contributed not only to the eventual easing of the AFC, but to economic stability throughout Asia as well.

Jao opens with a discussion of the nature, causes, and consequences of the AFC. After an overview of Hong Kong's economic and financial fundamentals on the eve of the crisis, he examines the impact it had up close. He examines the massive speculation against the Hong Kong dollar, explaining why speculators were defeated. The AFC's impact on the assets market are also explored. He also analyzes the impact on the financial sector and the real economy. Jao studies and answers two hard questions: why was the economic downturn so severe and why was the territory initially a laggard in economic recovery? He then takes up China's role, and presents an objective, balanced view of Hong Kong's money and finance under Chinese sovereignty, followed by a discussion of how China herself coped with the AFC. The book concludes with an in-depth discussion of the lessons the AFC has taught us and the author's reflections on post-AFC issues.

This book investigates several competing forecasting models for interest rates, financial returns, and realized volatility, addresses the usefulness of nonlinear models for hedging purposes, and proposes new computational techniques to estimate financial processes.

There has been a long tradition of research on the relation between diversification and performance of public corporations in the strategy and finance fields. As for private equity portfolios, research on this matter is rather scarce. From a theoretical as well as from a practical perspective, however, it is interesting to know more about the relation between private equity portfolio diversification and performance, how private equity firms manage their portfolios, and what public companies can learn from private equity firms. These are the research questions which are addressed in Daniel Klier's research. In order to answer these questions, the author uses a two-tier research design. As a first step, he compares the diversification-performance link of public corporations and private equity firms. With respect to the private equity sample and the ope- tionalization of the relevant variables, the study is highly innovative in terms of generating the PE sample from databases like Preqin and Dealogic, constructing a diversification measure from transaction data, and developing comparable perfo- ance measures for private equity firms as well as traditional multi-business firms. As the second step, which is exploratory in nature, the author explores m- agement models of PE firms. The sample of 20 US and Europe-based private equity firms is unique and of high quality, because the author succeeded in getting in-depth interviews with top decision makers of PE firms. The exploratory study extracts three clusters of management models that PE firms are using, and their relation to performance.

This book provides insights into the evolving debate regarding the mobilization of domestic resources and the crucial role that financial development can and should play in this regard, exploring aspects of the financial development-domestic resource mobilization nexus, including country case studies.

This volume contains contributions on a range of important issues in current research in finance and economics. Topics include the IPO underwriting spreads, the moral hazard problems in bank regulation as well as in the cost of deposit insurance, the loan yield spreads, and the aggregate bank performance at the state-level. The topics in global investments such as diversification benefits, overreaction and seasonality among international stock markets are also included in this volume. The contributions to this volume also address the appropriate asset allocation of hedge funds, the effects of partial hedging in incentive stocks and options, the relation between board size and firm performance, the impact of higher oil prices on stock market returns, and the futures hedging effectiveness with alternative settlement specifications in the contracts. This volume contains articles contributed by leading experts in finance and economics. It includes articles on the hot topics of oil-prices and hedge-funds.

The theme of Research in Finance vol. 29 is "Dealing with Crisis and Regulation." The first chapter looks for solutions to the European financial crisis, and the second provides a study of audit qualifications for accounting firms in Spain using advanced empirical methods. The next chapters are more international in focus, with topics including: business strategies for competition in Mexico; anomalies in the real return on corporate equity compared to real assets; the stabilizing influence of commodity futures trading in oil and gold. The following chapters explore the unintended consequences and burdens of regulations, for example the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and other more deeply underlying factors in the financial markets. The regulatory examination then shifts to the electric power grid, and some unintended consequences of the new regulations requiring retail utilities to buy all the power produced by wind and solar generators linked to their grid.

Is your business not reaching enough prospects, experiencing long sales cycles, or not seeing your marketing campaigns generating the revenue you expect? What if you could have instant access to preexisting plans, do more in less time, save money, and increase your ROI? Morgan Rees has put it all together in "Marketing Action Plans, " a concise, step-by-step book with bottom line guides and strategies that will take your company from invisible to remarkable. It's like having your own marketing department available to you, twenty-four hours a day, every day Learn from Morgan's experience with such notable brands as Philips Electronics, Norelco, Marantz, Magnavox, Citrix Online, Netgear, and Honeywell. "Marketing Action Plans" offers ready-to-use plans, processes, outlines, guidelines, booklets, templates, and forms that you can customize by simply filling in the details. Some customization will be necessary to fit the needs of your organization, but a substantial part of your plan, layout, and content are provided. "Marketing Action Plans" is a year-round resource tool. It's not the kind of book that sits on your bookshelf at home; rather, it is an important tool that can guide you through the development of plans for your company or organization. Enjoy your "MAP" to success.

Longlisted for the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2017

Finance is shrouded in mystery for outsiders, while many insiders are uneasy with the disrepute of their profession. How can finance become more accessible and also recover its nobility?

Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai takes up the cause of restoring humanity to finance. With deft wit, he draws upon a rich knowledge of literature, film, history, and philosophy to explain finance's inner workings. Through this creative approach, he shows that outsiders can easily access the underlying ideas and insiders can reacquaint themselves with the core values of their profession.

This combination of finance and the humanities creates unusual and illuminating pairings: Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope are guides to risk management; Jeff Koons becomes an advocate of leverage; and Mel Brooks' The Producers teaches us about fiduciary responsibility. In Desai's vision, the principles of finance also provide answers to critical questions in our lives: bankruptcy teaches us how to react to failure, the lessons of mergers apply to marriages, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model demonstrates the true value of relationships.

The Wisdom of Finance is a wholly unique book, offering an enlivening new perspective on one of the world's most complex and misunderstood professions.

This book examines how business, the social sciences, science and technology will impact the future of ASEAN. Following the ASEAN VISION 2020, it analyses the issues faced by ASEAN countries, which are diverse, while also positioning ASEAN as a competitive entity through partnerships. On the 30th anniversary of ASEAN, all ASEAN leaders agreed to the establishment of the ASEAN VISION 2020, which delineates the formation of a peaceful, stable and dynamically developed region while maintaining a community of caring societies in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. In keeping with this aspiration, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UitM) Perlis took the initial steps to organise conferences and activities that highlight the role of the ASEAN region. The Second International Conference on the Future of ASEAN (ICoFA) 2017 was organised by the Office of Academic Affairs, Universiti Teknologi MARA Perlis, to promote more comprehensive integration among ASEAN members. This book, divided into two volumes, offers a useful guide for all those engaged in research on business, the social sciences, science and technology. It will also benefit researchers worldwide who want to gain more knowledge about ASEAN countries.

Wariboko offers a critical-philosophical perspective on the logics and dynamics of finance capital in the twenty-first century in order to craft a model of the care of the soul that will enable citizens to not only better negotiate their economic existences and moral evaluations within it, but also resist its negative impact on social life.

This book examines key issues connected with the distribution of personal wealth in the UK. It examines why wealth is now such an important factor in social differences and public policy. It presents the most recent information on current wealth inequalities and a detailed discussion of trends in the distribution of wealth. It uses newly available data to compare wealth inequalities in the UK with the USA, Canada and Sweden. It uses longitudinal data, which track the same people over time, to examine trajectories in wealth accumulation over the decade to 2005 and inequalities in inheritances over the same period. It looks at how parental wealth levels and people's asset-holdings early in adulthood affect outcomes later in their lives. The final part looks at the way in which policies towards wealth-holding developed historically, and the contradictory ways in which a wide range of public policies relate to people's wealth levels, including through taxation, means-testing, and the encouragement of saving, and discusses what the key issues for policy towards wealth and wealth inequalities now are. Personal wealth in the UK totalled GBP5.5 trillion by 2010 (GBP9-10 trillion if occupational pension rights are included). Inheritance flows are now equivalent to 4 per cent of national income each year. All households in the wealthiest tenth have more than 75 times the wealth of any of those in the bottom tenth. Absolute differences in wealth levels have increased substantially over the last 15 years, so wealth differences represent many more years of income than in the past. This makes them of great importance to life chances. This makes the book highly relevant for public policy, but also for academic and student understanding of a crucial dimension of social difference. As well as bringing together existing information on the area, the book contains considerable new analysis on wealth inequality, inheritance and their impacts, drawing on work which is at the forefront of recent research.

Written by a group of international experts, this book focuses on three interdependent themes: (a) origins and consequences of the current debt crisis; (b) the systemic nature of the crisis; (c) national and international policy efforts to avoid a global collapse and bring about lasting reforms in the Euro zone and in the financial system.

This book proposes new methods to value equity and model the Markowitz efficient frontier using Markov switching models and provide new evidence and solutions to capture the persistence observed in stock returns across developed and emerging markets.