The behavior of multinational corporations and their affiliates, and the impact of foreign direct investment on host economics, vary between countries and industries in a systematic way. MNCs select their strategies depending on the characteristics of their technologies and products. Some host country governments try simultaneously to influence behavior of the foreign MNC's operating in their territory. The effects of (FDI) on the host economy are determined by this intricate interplay of firm and host country strategies. This book summarizes more than a decade of research aiming to understand this interplay.

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.

A New York Times bestseller

In a remarkable career, Edward O. Thorp rose up from nothing to become a professor at MIT, invented card counting and the world's first wearable computer, beat the casinos of Las Vegas at blackjack and roulette, then became a bestselling author and a hedge fund heavyweight, ushering in a revolution on Wall Street. Now he shares his incredible life story for the first time, revealing how he made his fortune and giving advice to the next generation of investors. An intellectual thrill ride, replete with practical wisdom, A Man for All Markets is a scarcely imaginable tale of ludicrous success.

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

No one ever said pension scheme trusteeship was easy. Indeed, this is particularly true with regard to the investment aspects of trusteeship, with its many nuances and often mystifying jargon and terminology. Trustees must strive to improve upon their skill, expertise and organisational effectiveness in determining and monitoring a scheme's investment strategy, because simplicity in many aspects of trusteeship and investment are continually giving way to increased complexity. Written by two renowned and highly experienced industry practitioners, with a mission to advance trustees' investment knowledge and to provide them with the necessary confidence and competence to adopt an advanced level of investment governance for their scheme, The Trustee Guide to Investment is a uniquely and refreshingly objective and practical guide to the ever expanding range of markets, investments, tools and techniques to which pension scheme trustees are increasingly exposed by their fund managers and advisers.

China's opening up has unleashed lucrative opportunities to foreign investors. However, doing business in China is far more difficult than many people have anticipated. Using a new theoretical framework and comprehensive evidence, this book systematically examines China's hard and soft investment environment for FDI. Main problems encountered by investors are also investigated. The book is an essential guide to investors in avoiding common and expensive pitfalls of doing business in China and an invaluable reference for consultants, researchers and students in understanding the Chinese market.

The authors present a number of financial market studies that have as their general theme, the econometric testing of the underlying econometric assumptions of a number of financial models. More than 30 years of financial market research has convinced the authors that not enough attention has been paid to whether the estimated model is appropriate or, most importantly, whether the estimation technique is suitable for the problem under study. For many years linear models have been assumed with little or no testing of alternative specification. The result has been models that force linearity assumptions on what clearly are nonlinear processes. Another major assumption of much financial research constrains the coefficients to be stable over time. This critical assumption has been attacked by Lucas (1976) on the grounds that when economic policy changes, the coefficients of macroeconomics models change. If this occurs, any policy forecasts of these models will be flawed. In financial modeling, omitted (possibly non-quantifiable) variables will bias coefficients. While it may be possible to model some financial variables for extended periods, in other periods the underlying models may either exhibit nonlinearity or show changes in linear models. The authors research indicates that tests for changes in linear models, such as recursive residual analysis, or tests for episodic nonlinearity can be used to signal changes in the underlying structure of the market.

The book begins with a brief review of basic linear time series techniques that include autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA), vector autoregressive models (VAR), and models form the ARCH/GARCH class. While the ARIMA and VAR approach models the first moment of a series, models of the ARCH/GARCH class model both the first moment and second moment which is interpreted as conditional or explained volatility of a series. Recent work on nonlinearity detection has questioned the appropriateness of these essentially linear approaches. A number of such tests are shown and applied for the complete series and a subsets of the series. A major finding is that the structure of the series may change over time. Within the time frame of a study, there may be periods of episodic nonlinearity, episodic ARCH and episodic nonstationarity. Measures are developed to measure and relate these events both geographically and with mathematical models. This book will be of interest to applied finance researchers and to market participants.

This major book extends Michal Kalecki's investment cycle analysis into an integrated dynamic model of how levels of confidence experienced by entrepreneurs affect their decisions to invest. The long-term, expensive and uncertain nature of investment projects inhibits decision makers' confidence, making it susceptible to a wide range of factors. Incorporating behavioural and evolutionary analysis into a Kaleckian investment model, Jerry Courvisanos develops the concept of susceptibility which provides the foundation for an improved understanding of the empirically observed cyclical instability of capital accumulation. Historically based empirical patterns of cyclical manufacturing investment in capitalist economies are identified and related to how the nature of susceptibility alters over time. These alterations are shown to create different investment cycle patterns over evolving periods of economic development. Drawing on this susceptibility cycle model, Jerry Courvisanos shows how corporate and governmental strategic planners can better design policies to mitigate the instability that investment exhibits. The result could be to diminish the aggravating effect that investment instability has on business cycles and employment in capitalist economies.

Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed--and not changed--over the last five hundred years? Edward Chancellor examines the nature of speculation--from medieval Europe to the Tulip mania of the 1630s to today's Internet stock craze. A contributing writer to The Financial Times and The Economist, looks at both the psychological and economic forces that drive people to "bet" their money in markets; how markets are made, unmade, and manipulated; and who wins when speculation runs rampant. Drawing colorfully on the words of such speculators as Sir Isaac Newton, Daniel Defoe, Ivan Boesky, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Devil Take the Hindmost is part history, part social science, and purely illuminating: an erudite and hugely entertaining book that is more timely today than ever before.

Venture Capital. A Euro-System Approach covers a wide spectrum of topics: it investigates the way venture capital really works, the relations between venture capital, corporate banking and stock exchanges, market trends in Europe and the US, legal issues related to the creation of venture capital firms and closed end funds, and finally regulatory and economic policy issues. The book is based on a strong link between a rigorous methodological approach and real world best practices of venture capitalists - thanks to a team of contributors formed by both academics and professionals of different fields (venture capitalists, financial analysts, regulators, stock exchange executives).

In the past decades asset intensive companies have witnessed a number of regulatory changes and especially industry is facing ever increasing competitiveness. To overcome these challenges different asset management methods have been developed aimed to improve the asset life cycle. Especially the design phase and operation and maintenance phase have seen a rise in tools and methods. Smarter design can lead to improved operation. Likewise, improved operation and maintenance leads to lower replacement costs and may provide the basis for better design. This book brings together and coherently presents the current state of the art in asset management research and practice in Europe from a life cycle perspective. Each chapter focuses on specific parts of this life cycle and explains how the methods and techniques described are connected and how they improve the asset life cycle, thus treating this important subject from a unique perspective.

Over the last 20 years hedge funds and derivatives have fluctuated in reputational terms; they have been blamed for the global financial crisis and been praised for the provision of liquidity in troubled times. Both topics are rather under-researched due to a combination of data and secrecy issues. This book is a collection of papers celebrating 20 years of the Journal of Derivatives and Hedge Funds (JDHF). The 18 papers included in this volume represent a small sample of influential papers included during the life of the Journal, representing industry-orientated research in these areas. With a Preface from co-editor of the journal Stephen Satchell, the first part of the collection focuses on hedge funds and the second on markets, prices and products.

Practical information for investing newcomers! Have you wanted to seriously begin investing but are wary because of confusing and complicated terminology and concepts? Then the Concise Encyclopedia of Investing is for you. This A-to-Z reference provides clear, concise explanations of basic as well as more advanced investment terms to help even the most unsophisticated newcomer. This unique user-friendly handbook presents not only simple, brief explanations of various investing terms and concepts, but also a short discussion on each as to how it applies in everyday life. The Concise Encyclopedia of Investing clears the mysteries behind the foundations of investing, giving newbies solid information they can use to explore investment possibilities. Retirement terminology, market terminology, portfolio techniques, tax information, and investment options are explained using plain language to quickly answer often-asked questions. The book discusses basic terms such as common and preferred stocks, bonds, and capital gains, as well as more complex terms and concepts such as P/E ratio and pass-through security. Helpful lists of reference books and various online investment resources provide opportunities for investors to easily find more detailed information about specific topics. The Concise Encyclopedia of Investing includes explanations with everyday examples of basic and more complex concepts and terms such as: 401K 403B annuities asset allocation capital gains commodities convertibles estate planning face value future value investments guaranteed investment contract (GIC) hedge funds index funds market timing money market fund (MMF) non qualified retirement plans open end funds option contract pass-through security precious metals Present Value Investments P/E Ratio PPI REIT Real Rate of Return ROE statements of retained earnings STRIPS systematic risk UIT variable annuities yield-to-maturity zero-coupon securities and many more! The invaluable Concise Encyclopedia of Investing is perfect for anyone grappling with investment terminology. This reference is sure to become an indispensable desktop resource for any new investor.