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.

The digital revolution is changing our world and the fundamentals of business faster than anyone expected, and the responsibility for leading key aspects of enterprise-wide business transformation often falls to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This book provides motivation and guidance for current and future finance leaders to navigate an increasingly unpredictable, dynamic, complex and connected world. As businesses are forced to change fundamentally or accept the reality of being left behind, the CFO has a particularly important part to play in preparing for this change - not only for their own function but for the business as a whole. So what is the role of CFOs in delivering digital business transformation? What can they do to manage business resources and performance more dynamically? How can CFOs contribute to the creation and management of new business models, such as digital business platforms and ecosystems? And what can finance leaders do to enable sustainable growth and long-term multi-stakeholder value creation? These and many more key questions are tackled in The Contemporary CFO, which draws on practical experience of transforming leading global businesses and on extensive, original research, including in-depth interviews with a wide range of corporate leaders. CFOs are used to managing change but delivering a complex business transformation on top of an already demanding role can be challenging. This essential guide includes the latest thinking, trends and perspectives to help finance leaders navigate the demands of the connected world successfully.

The monetary system is at a turning point. The question is no longer if, but how soon countries will roll out a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). This book discusses the recomposition of the money supply from the present bank money regime to a monetary system determined by CBDC. As the book sets out, the future of money is going to be digital and sovereign. Nonetheless, the relationship between the various types of money is competitive rather than being the peaceful coexistence that was officially envisaged. CBDC competes with the incumbent bank money as well as with private cryptocurrencies that are challenging both central-bank money as well as bank money. For technological and political reasons, bank money will not be able to emulate the superior properties of sovereign digital tokens. Uncovered and unwarranted cryptocurrencies, too, will not stand the competition in the long run. The shifts in the monetary system are changing the role of central banks in the interplay of monetary, fiscal and private-creditary functions and open up improved options for monetary policy. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and policymakers in monetary and financial economics, and digital currencies.

This open access book is the first attempt to elaborate the formalization phase of banking supervision in eight developed countries-USA, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and UK. This innovative study in the field of banking supervision history identifies why national histories of banking supervision share similarities, but also remain different and are heavily path dependent. This book will be of great interest not only to financial/economic historians but also to general readers interested in banking supervision, i.e., students, bankers, supervisors, and international officials.

There are ten papers in this volume. They are:

1. An Empirical Examination of The Intraday Return Volatility Process.
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the distributional and time-series properties of intraday returns. The purpose is to determine whether a GARCH model that allows for time variance in a process can adequately represent intraday return volatility.
2. The Valuation of New Product Introduction Under Uncertain Competition: A Real Option Approach.
This paper investigates how a stochastic competition process in a two-factor real option model could affect the value of future product development opportunities. Our results also indicate that product development opportunities are more valuable: (1) in a more volatile environment; (2) when the window of opportunities is longer; and (3) when the competitive intensity is lower.
3. Earnings, Dividends, and Equity Value of Multinational Firms.
This paper develops and tests a valuation model, whose main prediction is that equity value is a function of earnings, dividends and book value, where the function depends on the relative level of multinationality.
4. Benford's Law and Its Application in Financial Fraud Detection.
This paper has discussed Benford's law, which explains that the leading (first or leftmost) digit in a series of natural numbers is not evenly distributed among the digits 1 to 9. The main purpose of this study actually seeks to explore a new methodological approach to datamining that can be of some real practical value; especially to the auditors and forensic accountants in detecting financial frauds.
5. Estimation of the Degree of Integration in the U.S. MaturityRates Using Semiparametric Techniques.
This paper examines the order of integration of several U.S. Treasury maturity rates by means of using semiparametric techniques. The results show that the order of integration of the one and three year maturity rates is strictly above 1. It oscillates around one in case of the five-year rate, and the values are strictly below 1 (and thus showing mean reversion), for the seven and ten-year rates.
6. On Country-Fund Price Behavior-An Empirical Analysis of Cointegrating Factors.
This paper provides empirical evidence on the price behavior of closed-end country funds. Using the data from 47 closed-end single-country funds, we examine three Cointegrating factors to describe the long-run behavior of country-fund share prices. They are: the net asset value (NAV), foreign stock-market indexes, and the U.S. stock market index.
7. Strategic Capital Budgeting: the Abandonment Option with Political Risk.
This paper investigates the strategic role of political risk and timing in the capital budgeting process that includes both investment and disinvestments. The model developed in the paper highlights the role of the probability of an investment ending political event in the capital budgeting process.
8. Time Series Model Complexity and Firm Valuation: the Case of AR1 Firms Versus Non-AR1 Firms.
This study examines the effect of the complexity of quarterly earnings generating time series models on firm valuation. The examination is limited to the comparison between AR1 firms and non-AR1 firms, and the evaluations are based on the levels approach. Results consistently show that the association between quarterly stock prices andquarterly earnings is higher for AR1 firms than that for non-AR1 firms. The effect of firm size is also investigated.
9. Debt Covenant Violation and the Value Relevance of Accounting Information.
This study documents that investors exercise their liquidation option on firms facing less severe financial distress than bankruptcy filings. This study finds that the valuation shift from earnings to book value of equity in the violation manifestation period is reversed in the post-violation recovery period. This suggests that the valuation distortion in the pre-violation period is temporary rather than permanent.
10. What's Next: Merger in the Lebanese Banking Sector.
This paper studies banking preference and behavior of Lebanese people. If small banks are to survive, the findings of the study reaffirm the importance of vertically merging banks in Lebanon. The reliance on digital technology is increasing every day. To deepen the problem, small Lebanese banks are finding themselves in a digital environment that affects their ability to compete in a fierce environment.

Economists broadly define financial asset price bubbles as episodes in which prices rise with notable rapidity and depart from historically established asset valuation multiples and relationships. Financial economists have for decades attempted to study and interpret bubbles through the prisms of rational expectations, efficient markets, equilibrium, arbitrage, and capital asset pricing models, but they have not made much if any progress toward a consistent and reliable theory that explains how and why bubbles (and crashes) evolve and are defined, measured, and compared. This book develops a new and different approach that is based on the central notion that bubbles and crashes reflect urgent short-side rationing, which means that, as such extreme conditions unfold, considerations of quantities owned or not owned begin to displace considerations of price.

Microfinance is a renowned albeit controversial solution for giving financial access to the unbanked, even if micro-transactions increase costs, limiting outreach potential. The economic and financial sustainability of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) is a prerequisite for widening a potentially unlimited client base. Automation decreases costs, expanding the outreach potential, and improving transparency and efficiency. Technological solutions range from branchless mobile banking to geo-localization of customers, digital/social networking for group lending, blockchain validation, big data, and artificial intelligence, up to "MicroFinTech" - FinTech applications adapted to microfinance. Of interest to both scholars, students, and professors of financial technology and microfinance, this book examines these trendy solutions comprehensively, going beyond the existing literature and showing potential applications to the traditional sustainability versus outreach trade-off.

The benchmark approach provides a general framework for financial market modeling, which extends beyond the standard risk-neutral pricing theory. It permits a unified treatment of portfolio optimization, derivative pricing, integrated risk management and insurance risk modeling. The existence of an equivalent risk-neutral pricing measure is not required. Instead, it leads to pricing formulae with respect to the real-world probability measure. This yields important modeling freedom which turns out to be necessary for the derivation of realistic, parsimonious market models. The first part of the book describes the necessary tools from probability theory, statistics, stochastic calculus and the theory of stochastic differential equations with jumps. The second part is devoted to financial modeling by the benchmark approach. Various quantitative methods for the real-world pricing and hedging of derivatives are explained. The general framework is used to provide an understanding of the nature of stochastic volatility. The book is intended for a wide audience that includes quantitative analysts, postgraduate students and practitioners in finance, economics and insurance. It aims to be a self-contained, accessible but mathematically rigorous introduction to quantitative finance for readers that have a reasonable mathematical or quantitative background. Finally, the book should stimulate interest in the benchmark approach by describing some of its power and wide applicability.

This book aims to systematically assess laws and practices, close gaps that currently prevent a full profiling of financial participation, provide a description of individual countries against the background of comparable scores for the EU 27 and to promote a common platform for financial participation within the European Union.

This volume consists of original research articles examining timely issues in financial services, asset pricing, and hedging. The articles in the first part of the volume deal with methods for assessing the safety and soundness of banks, rationales for and economic consequences of bank mergers, valuation effects of lender environmental liability, option-theoretic explanations of the closed-end mutual fund discount, and contingent-claims analysis of price-matching refunds. Articles in the second part of the volume study consumption smoothing and the equity premium puzzle, the yield spread of tax-deductible preferred stock, fitting a jump-diffusion model of currency futures options, duration effects on hedge ratios of currency futures, and dynamics between foreign exchange and stock markets in Southeast Asian economies.

This book aims to explore how Islamist parties mobilize debates, discourses, and environments in electoral authoritarian systems. Interrelating three theoretical schools, Electoral Authoritarianism Theory, Protest Voting Theory, and Political Process Theory, it adopts and expands on a demand-and-supply framework to approach the subject in a novel way, and adapts them to address North Africa, a region in which such theoretical scholarship has until now not been conducted. In-depth case studies focus on two Islamist parties in North Africa, Tunisia's Ennahda and Algeria's HMS, both of which adopted the Muslim Brotherhood model, had charismatic leaders, and were active in the political scene from 1989-2014, the period between their first electoral trial and their electoral participation after taking part in governance. The chapters proceed chronologically, providing a historical treatment of the evolution of Ennahda and the HMS since their inception and addressing their development in two and a half decades.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the financial systems of major industrialized countries using the statistical framework of the financial accounts. After a discussion of how economists agreed to create a framework to monitor the financial linkages between surplus and deficit sectors, the book analyzes in detail the composition and the recent evolution of financial assets and liabilities for households (including public pension rights), firms and intermediaries. Next, the volume studies the convergence patterns of financial structures and their influence on the effectiveness of monetary policy within European countries. The final chapter unifies the previous pictures, showing how the effects of financial integration and global imbalances could have been foreseen based on the financial accounts. The analysis and information contained in the book will help the readers to understand many issues and challenges raised by the recent financial crisis.

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 book proposes a new capital asset pricing model dubbed the ZCAPM that outperforms other popular models in empirical tests using US stock returns. The ZCAPM is derived from Fischer Black's well-known zero-beta CAPM, itself a more general form of the famous capital asset pricing model (CAPM) by 1990 Nobel Laureate William Sharpe and others. It is widely accepted that the CAPM has failed in its theoretical relation between market beta risk and average stock returns, as numerous studies have shown that it does not work in the real world with empirical stock return data. The upshot of the CAPM's failure is that many new factors have been proposed by researchers. However, the number of factors proposed by authors has steadily increased into the hundreds over the past three decades. This new ZCAPM is a path-breaking asset pricing model that is shown to outperform popular models currently in practice in finance across different test assets and time periods. Since asset pricing is central to the field of finance, it can be broadly employed across many areas, including investment analysis, cost of equity analyses, valuation, corporate decision making, pension portfolio management, etc. The ZCAPM represents a revolution in finance that proves the CAPM as conceived by Sharpe and others is alive and well in a new form, and will certainly be of interest to academics, researchers, students, and professionals of finance, investing, and economics.

This open access book provides a readable narrative of the bubbles and the banking crisis Japan experienced during the two decades between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Japan, which was a leading competitor in the world's manufacturing sector, tried to transform itself into an economy with domestic demand-led mature growth, but the ensuing bubbles and crisis instead made the country suffer from chronicle deflation and stagnation. The book analyses why the Japanese authorities could not avoid making choices that led to this outcome. The chapters are based on the lectures to regulators from emerging economies delivered at the Global Financial Partnership Center of the Financial Services Agency of Japan.

This book considers the extent to which innovation and entrepreneurship are engines of economic prosperity. It brings together theorists and empiricists from diverse backgrounds to provides a comprehensive overview of the field of entrepreneurship, focusing specifically on entrepreneurial developments within Turkey and the surrounding regions and Europe. It looks at innovation, creativity, economic development and women's empowerment. This book considers the for-profit and the not-for-profit sectors, and examines outcome metrics such as change, sustainability and employment, in addition to economic value. This book will inspire academics and students to better understand the origins, evolution and impact of new ideas, new organizations, and new industries, and the impact on the economy. This book offers an excellent foundation for investigating and questioning current entrepreneurial practices across developed economies. It will also provide the foundations for researching and evaluating new and existing approaches to emerging technologies. Additionally, the book will offer useful insights into the real world, and will appeal to academics in economics and business as well as those studying entrepreneurship on the international scene.

This book constitutes a selection of the best papers from the 15th International Conference on Business Excellence, Digital Economy and New Value Creation, ICBE 2021, held in Bucharest, Romania, in March 2021. This book is a collection of research findings and perspectives related to the digital economy and new value creation, led by the set of improvements and changes in the economic, societal and technological structures and processes towards the effort of reaching the sustainability goals.

This 12th volume in the series discusses a variety of topics in the field of research in international business and finance.

The business of credit ratings began in the United States in the early 1900s. Over time, credit ratings have gradually taken on an expanding role, both in the United States and abroad and in official financial market regulation as well as in private capital market decisions. However, in 1999 the Bank for International Settlements (through its Committee on Banking Supervision) proposed rule changes that would provide an explicit role for credit ratings in determining a bank's required regulatory risk capital. Once implemented, this BIS proposal (often referred to as Basel 2) would vastly elevate the importance of credit ratings by linking the required measure of bank capital to the credit rating of the bank's obligors. With these regulatory changes under active discussion, research into the role for ratings and rating agencies in the global financial system is particularly apropos.
Ratings, Rating Agencies and the Global Financial System brings together the research of economists at New York University and the University of Maryland, along with those from the private sector, government bodies, and other universities. The first section of the volume focuses on the historical origins of the credit rating business and its present day industrial organization structure. The second section presents several empirical studies crafted largely around individual firm-level or bank-level data. These studies examine (a) the relationship between ratings and the default and recovery experience of corporate borrowers, (b) the comparability of credit ratings made by domestic and foreign rating agencies, and (c) the usefulness of financial market indicators for rating banks, among other topics. In thethird section, the record of sovereign credit ratings in predicting financial crises and the reaction of financial markets to changes in credit ratings is examined. The final section of the volume emphasizes policy issues now facing regulators and credit rating agencies.

The global markets continue to be volatile and the overall economy remains uncertain.

In this environment, it's more important than ever to get familiar with risk management principles and seek out alternative investment strategies carefully to maintain and grow your capital.

Written by Raghurami Reddy Etukuru, MBA, CAIA, FRM, PRM, this guidebook introduces you to various alternative investments and risk management concepts in straightforward language. For instance, hedge funds are often seen as risky investments, but they actually provide greater diversification than traditional common stocks. If you engage in the proper hedge fund strategy, you'll also find less volatility.

In addition to hedge funds, you will find information and guidance on various phases of due diligence; risk metrics, quantitative models and exotic options; commodities, managed futures, private equities, and real estate; brokers, auditors, and legal counsel.

Get the information you need to make informed decisions about your own finances. Whether you are a businessperson, student, analyst it's imperative for you to develop a deeper understanding of "Alternative Investment Strategies and Risk Management."

Financial analysis, modellng, simulation and knowledge engineering have become essential to the survival of every enterprise. This thorough and comprehensive book looks at the development and use of financial models for analysis and decision-making, showing the reader how to apply these methods in his or her own work.

This book on Applied Operations Research and Financial Modelling in Energy (AORFME) presents several applications of operations research (OR) and financial modelling. The contributions by a group of OR and Finance researchers focus on a variety of energy decisions, presenting a quantitative perspective, and providing policy implications of the proposed or applied methodologies. The content is divided into three main parts: Applied OR I: Optimization Approaches, Applied OR II: Forecasting Approaches and Financial Modelling: Impacts of Energy Policies and Developments in Energy Markets. The book appeals to scholars in economics, finance and operations research, and to practitioners working in the energy sector. This is the eighth volume in a series of books on energy organized by the Centre for Energy and Value Issues (CEVI). For this volume, CEVI collaborated with Hacettepe University's Energy Markets Research and Application Center. The previous volumes in the series are: Financial Aspects in Energy (2011), Energy Economics and Financial Markets (2012), Perspectives on Energy Risk (2014), Energy Technology and Valuation Issues (2015), Energy and Finance (2016), Energy Economy, Finance and Geostrategy (2018), and Financial Implications of Regulations in the Energy Industry (2020).

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.