The second volume of the series contains a combination of theoretical and empirical studies of issues in financial economics, investments, and banking authored by leading researchers in the US and Europe. Specific topics examined include asset pricing, corporate governance, dividend policy, pricing of financial services, portfolio theory, interest rate risk, capital structure, diversification strategies, and credit risk modelling. In addition to theoretical and empirical papers included in the volume, two represent applied articles written from a regulatory perspective by practising regulators.

The importance of technology transfer for the competitive advantage of companies and the economic success of nations cannot be overstated. Technology is a determining element for firms and nations to increase productivity, to compete, and to prosper. In The Competitive Advantage of Regions and Nations, the authors stress that companies, investment promotion agencies, and government bodies cannot simply sit and wait until new technologies arrive in their domain. Rather, they need to manage the identification, assessment, attraction, absorption and application of new technologies. In this comprehensive book, Boris Ricken and George Malcotsis explain how technology transfer in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects can be systematically managed. Using some 40 case studies as illustration, they give step-by-step guidance for managers. The explanation of theory in this book, together with the frameworks and cases delivering solutions to the various challenges of technology transfer will be highly appreciated by managers of companies, investment promotion agencies, and government bodies alike. It also offers students confronted with the topic an understandable study guide.

This book consists of invaluable introductions, tutorials and problems which are helpful for teaching purposes and have a very broad appeal and usage. The problems cover many aspects of static and dynamic portfolio theory as well as other important subjects such as arbitrage and asset pricing, utility theory, stochastic dominance, risk aversion and static portfolio theory, risk measures, dynamic portfolio theory and asset allocation. This material could be used with important books that cover these topics including MacLean-Ziemba's The Handbook of the Fundamentals of Financial Decision Making, and Ziemba-Vickson's Stochastic Optimization Models in Finance.

The convertible bond market has recently gained increasing significance on a global basis with particularly notable growth among very fast growing companies hungry for capital. Philip's Convertible Bond Markets is a comprehensive assessment of this market place, illustrating clearly how investors of all risk persuasions may best utilise the instrument. It will be of great interest both to academics and to professionals including equity fund managers, bond fund managers, 'swaps' teams, stock loan departments, risk controllers, treasurers and proprietary traders.

Probabilistic and percentile/quantile functions play an important role in several applications, such as finance (Value-at-Risk), nuclear safety, and the environment. Recently, significant advances have been made in sensitivity analysis and optimization of probabilistic functions, which is the basis for construction of new efficient approaches. This book presents the state of the art in the theory of optimization of probabilistic functions and several engineering and finance applications, including material flow systems, production planning, Value-at-Risk, asset and liability management, and optimal trading strategies for financial derivatives (options). Audience: The book is a valuable source of information for faculty, students, researchers, and practitioners in financial engineering, operation research, optimization, computer science, and related areas.

Energy Price Risk is the practitioner's guide to optimizing company performance using the correct price risk strategies and tools. Based on the author's extensive experience in the commodity derivatives industry, it comprehensively covers the full spectrum of the energy complex, including crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, LPG/LNG, and electricity. Using many worked examples, this book offers practical insights and solutions.

The analysis of investment decisions today draws upon a wide range of sources, from economics and finance to engineering economy and operations research. Dr. Beenhakker's book reflects this interdisciplinary approach, and without assuming prior knowledge of these fields or a sophisticated understanding of mathematics, provides professionals and upper-level students with the concepts and tools they need to make englightened investments in new ventures. Arranged to permit rapid review of an entire investment subject and written in a modular manner to allow readers to jump among chapters without losing their bearings, the book will help business managers deal intelligently with corporate financial and economic issues and government contracts. It will also help planners of the public sector incorporate the views of private industry in their own investment decision making. A unique, readable, comprehensive treatment for investment professionals and also for academics and their graduate-level students.

The analysis of investment decisions today draws upon a wide range of sources, from economics and finance to engineering economy and operations research. Dr. Beenhakker's book reflects this interdisciplinary approach, and without assuming prior knowledge of these fields or a sophisticated understanding of mathematics, provides professionals and upper-level students with the concepts and tools they need to make enlightened investments in new ventures. Arranged to permit rapid review of an entire investment subject and written in a modular manner to allow readers to jump among chapters without losing their bearings, the book will help business managers deal intelligently with corporate financial and economic issues and government contracts. It will also help planners of the public sector incorporate the views of private industry in their own investment decision making. A unique, readable, comprehensive treatment for investment professionals and also for academics and their graduate-level students.

Dr. Beenhakker begins with a study of financial statements and ratios, and covers annual reports, balance sheets, income and retained earnings statements, cash flow statements, and financial ratios. In Chapter 2 he looks at the valuation and investment problems when shares are under- or overvalued. He moves then to derivative securities, and in Chapter 4 to a discussion of diversification planning. In Chapter 5 he takes up the cost of capital, with special attention to risk, uncertainty, and certainty, and in Chapter 6 covers that and other topics in the context of project appraisal. Chapter 7 digs into programming and planning and covers topics such as the marginal cost of capital in capital budgeting, the optimal capital budget, capital rationing, and economic development plans. The book ends with a discussion of cost minimization problems, such as leasing and purchasing, replacement investments, expansion investments, decision trees, and the problem of how to ship quantities from supply to demand centers such that the total cost of transport is minimized. Five appendices provide readers with various tables and formulas to assist in their own calculations.

With the relaxation of capital controls in a large number of developed and developing countries and the globalization of capital markets, economies of emerging markets have attracted a great deal of attention. The objective of this book is to better understand the economic characteristics and shortcomings of emerging markets and provide a discussion of some of the policies which may have to be adopted in conjunction with financial reforms in developing countries in order to reduce the risk of another financial crisis. The book includes case study material.

Why do some companies stay out of stock markets? How crucial are stock markets for competition between financial centres? How can local information help investors outperform the market?
While mainstream financial economics treats stock markets as consisting of anonymous actors interacting in space, with no consideration of the friction caused by distance or geography, this book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the global stock market by focusing on the relationships between issuers, investors, and intermediaries, and how these relationships impact on the performance of stock markets and the economy of cities, countries, and the world.
The book uses rich data and global case studies to examine the rise of emerging markets, the impact of the global financial crisis, the revolution in the stock exchange business model, and the continued dominance of London and New York as stock market centres.
Drawing on economic geography, financial economics, sociology, history, and globalization studies, the book explores the geographical constitution and footprint of stock markets and contributes to the broader debate on the role of stock markets in the global economy. Its conclusions are relevant to investors, companies issuing stocks, exchanges, analysts, investment banks, and policy-makers.

The taxation of equity derivatives and financial products is analyzed in detail by Tony Rumble and his contributors, Mohammed Amin and Ed Kleinbard. The book covers the financial and tax technical analysis of issues relating to equity derivatives and financial products. Part I examines the derivatives building blocks and financial market/corporate finance drivers of the equity derivatives and financial products market, and includes case studies of typical and landmark transactions. Part II looks at the tax technical rules in each of the target countries and examines the specific products highlighted in the first part of the book.

Eschewing a more theoretical approach, Portfolio Optimization shows how the mathematical tools of linear algebra and optimization can quickly and clearly formulate important ideas on the subject. This practical book extends the concepts of the Markowitz "budget constraint only" model to a linearly constrained model.

Only requiring elementary linear algebra, the text begins with the necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal quadratic minimization that is subject to linear equality constraints. It then develops the key properties of the efficient frontier, extends the results to problems with a risk-free asset, and presents Sharpe ratios and implied risk-free rates. After focusing on quadratic programming, the author discusses a constrained portfolio optimization problem and uses an algorithm to determine the entire (constrained) efficient frontier, its corner portfolios, the piecewise linear expected returns, and the piecewise quadratic variances. The final chapter illustrates infinitely many implied risk returns for certain market portfolios.

Drawing on the author 's experiences in the academic world and as a consultant to many financial institutions, this text provides a hands-on foundation in portfolio optimization. Although the author clearly describes how to implement each technique by hand, he includes several MATLAB programs designed to implement the methods and offers these programs on the accompanying CD-ROM.

The advent of new stock markets (the German Neuer Markt, the French Nouveau March??, the Italian Nuovo Mercato and Nasdaq Europe) has been one of the most important reforms of stock exchanges in Continental Europe in the 1990s. These stock markets aimed at attracting early stage, innovative and high-growth firms that would not have been viable candidates for public equity financing on the main markets of European stock exchanges. Of these new markets, the Neuer Markt emerged as Europe's answer to NASDAQ. However, Europe's new stock markets met with only limited success. Stock prices plummeted after the ending of the stock market bubble and new markets suffered from poor liquidity, insider trading scandals and accounting frauds. This volume provides an overview of the rise and fall of Europe's new stock markets. It contains twelve papers which investigate the characteristics, the ownership structure and the market performance of companies in the short and long run, In addition this volume examines the role of venture capitalists. New stock markets offered venture capitalists an attractive exit for their investments and helped to create a more vibrant venture capital industry in Europe. The private equity market in Europe today is as large as it was just before the advent of new stock markets. As such, the need for stock markets that allow private equity investors to divest their equity stakes in growth companies continues to exist.

Since financial myths exploded in the 1980s, the perspective of time creates a unique opportunity to update and expand the analysis begun in Glenn Yagos 1991 book, Junk Bonds: How High Yield Securities Restructured Corporate America (Oxford University Press). At the time of its publication, Junk Bonds drew controversial responses from the Federal Reserve and government agencies. In retrospect, the evidence clearly casts favorable light on the role of high yield securities. The research presented here demonstrates how financial innovations enabled capital access for industrial restructuring, capital and labor productivity gains, and improved global competitiveness. Enough time has now passed to allow this dispassionate empirical analysis to shear away the hype and hysteria that surrounded the Wall Street scandals, Washington controversies, and media frenzy of the time.

Beyond Junk Bonds provides a one-stop data, reference and case study presentation of the firms and securities in the contemporary high yield market and the financial innovations that spurred growth in the nineties and will continue to finance the future. The high yield market incubated successive waves of financial technologies that now proliferate beyond junk bonds to all the dimensions and dynamics of global debt and equity capital markets. It charts the recovery of the market in the 1990s, the recent wave of fallen angels, distressed credits and defaults, and suggests how the high yield market will be recreated in the global market of the 21st century. It explicates the linkages between the high yield market, and other credit and equity markets in managing a firms capital structure to execute its business strategy. The weakening of the U. S. economy in 2001 and the huge shock to Wall Street from the terrorist attacks of September 11 witnessed a historic increase in the yield to maturity of high yield bonds. Despite the volatility in the flow of funds to high yield mutual funds and occasionally sharp increases in non-investment grade debt yields, the asset class has been one of the best performing fixed income investments of the past decades. In fact, high yield bonds offer an attractive risk-reward ratio competitive with more traditional asset classes.

Anyone active in corporate finance, financial institutions and capital markets will find this book a must read for interpreting and understanding the recent history both of the high yield marketplace and its interaction with private equity, public equity, and fixed income markets. This new perspective recalling the ten years after the explosion of financial myths in the 1980's offers a unique opportunity to update and continue the arguments that were presented in Glen Yago's 1991 book, Junk Bonds: How High Yield Securities Restructured Corporate America. Beyond Junk Bonds provides a comprehensive presentation of the firms and securities represented in the high yield market. In addition, there are examples of the firms and institutions who are benefitting from the "new cycle", both in the US and abroad.

Bankers in Japan and China are masters of accounting, not risk management, and American-style rescue packages won't solve their banking crises. Cleaning up balance sheets and purging non-performing loans won't work either, say Arayama and Mourdoukoutas. The problem goes deeper. It stems from high growth environments and tight government regulation. The result has been to limit competition in Japan and eliminate it in China. And that led to the control of management behavior, which weakened incentives for Japanese and Chinese bank decision-makers to manage, hands-on, their traditional and nontraditional banking risks. Adding to the problem is rationed credit, reflecting MITI and MOF priorities in Japan and those set by the central planning authorities in China. Japanese bankers have been turned into experts on the abacus, the ancient calculator, but they have little experience with or understanding of the other more important aspects of the banking enterprise. Arayama and Mourdoukoutas lay it all out in a challenging, provocative, readable study and analysis. It is an essential resource for academicians and policymakers in business, government, and international finance and investment.

Arayama and Mourdoukoutas make it clear that Japanese and Chinese bankers must learn how to behave as for-profit institutions, where managers are accountable to the owners and other stakeholders. Second, they must be freed from government directives (in China) and guidance (in Japan) that control their day-to-day operations, and which restrict freedom to develop new products and businesses. Third, Japanese and Chinese bank managers must learn to act as true bankers. They must learn how to manage credit risk and function as public trading corporations. They must also learn how to deal with transparency and full disclosure rules and regulations, just as their Western counterparts must and do. In other words, say the authors, bank managers must escape the abacus mentality and learn how to use their brains rather than their fingers... and that may take much longer than anxious Western observers would have expected.

In this book, the author draws from finance, psychology, economics, and other disciplines in business and the social sciences, recognising that personal finance and investments are subjects of study in their own right rather than merely branches of another discipline. Considerable attention is given to topics which are either ignored or given very little attention in other texts. These include: the psychology of investment decision-making stock market bubbles and crashes property investment the use of derivatives in investment management regulation of investments business. More traditional subject areas are also thoroughly covered, including: investment analysis portfolio management capital market theory market efficiency international investing bond markets institutional investments option pricing macroeconomics the interpretation of company accounts. Packed with over one hundred exercises, examples and exhibits and a helpful glossary of key terms, this book helps readers grasp the relevant principles of money management. It avoids non-essential mathematics and provides a novel new approach to the study of personal finance and investments. This book will be essential for students and researchers engaged with personal finance, investments, behavioural finance, financial derivatives and financial economics. This book also comes with a supporting website that includes two updated chapters, a new article featuring a behavioural model of the dot com, further exercises, a full glossary and a regularly updated blog from the author.

This timely volume brings together professors of finance and accounting from Japanese universities to examine the Japanese stock market in terms of its pricing and accounting systems. The papers report the results of empirical research into the Japanese stock market within the framework of new theories of finance. Academics, professionals, and anyone seeking to understand or enter the Japanese market will applaud the publication of this practical, informative volume.

Having gathered data from the late 1970's through 1984, the authors analyze the market's behavior and the applicability of two major theoretical pricing models -- the Capital Asset Pricing Models and the Efficient Market Hypothesis -- to that market. Chapter 1 provides background statistical evidence on the behavior of monthly returns on Tokyo Stock Exchange common stocks. Chapter 2 discusses an empirical test of the capital asset pricing model. Chapter 3 examines evidence on the price performance of unseasoned new issues. The authors also examine the Japanese accounting disclosure system: Chapter 4 deals empirically with the information content of the annual accounting announcements and related market efficiency. The next chapter presents empirical evidence on the relationship between unsystematic returns and earnings forecast errors. Next, empirical research into the usefulness to investors of the disclosure system is examined. Finally, Chapter 7 presents several interesting questions and topics for future research on the Japanese stock market.

Many have written requesting me to write a new book. With the desire to help others I have written "45 Years in Wall Street" giving the benefit of my experience and my new discoveries to aid others in these difficult times. I am now in my 72nd year; fame would do me no good. I have more income than I can spend for my needs; therefore, my only object in writing this new book is to give to others the most valuable gift possible--KNOWLEDGE! If a few find the way to make safer investments my object will have been accomplished and satisfied readers will be my reward.

In this book I have revealed some of my most valuable rules and secret discoveries never published before, in hopes that others will work and study hard to learn and apply these rules. If they do, speculation and investing will no longer be gambling but will become a PROFITABLE PROFESSION.

W. D. Gann