Featuring international contributors from both industry and academia, Numerical Methods for Finance explores new and relevant numerical methods for the solution of practical problems in finance. It is one of the few books entirely devoted to numerical methods as applied to the financial field. Presenting state-of-the-art methods in this area, the book first discusses the coherent risk measures theory and how it applies to practical risk management. It then proposes a new method for pricing high-dimensional American options, followed by a description of the negative inter-risk diversification effects between credit and market risk. After evaluating counterparty risk for interest rate payoffs, the text considers strategies and issues concerning defined contribution pension plans and participating life insurance contracts. It also develops a computationally efficient swaption pricing technology, extracts the underlying asset price distribution implied by option prices, and proposes a hybrid GARCH model as well as a new affine point process framework. In addition, the book examines performance-dependent options, variance reduction, Value at Risk (VaR), the differential evolution optimizer, and put-call-futures parity arbitrage opportunities. Sponsored by DEPFA Bank, IDA Ireland, and Pioneer Investments, this concise and well-illustrated book equips practitioners with the necessary information to make important financial decisions.

Since the 1980's, urbanization in China has accelerated, but, more recently, it has also changed fundamentally in a structural sense as China is now 47% urban and has 89 cities of one million people, including the world cities of Beijing and Shanghai. The rapid urbanization has now spread to the cities of the hinterland, including third order cities like Anyang in Henan Province, which is the focus of this project. The Anyang Eastern New Town Plan is the first instance of a Chinese city funding an American academic planning unit to create a plan for a new district. The Plan was prepared by the Urban Studio of the School of Planning, University of Cincinnati, USA. The Final Conceptual Plan presented in this document explores urban development through a major departure from the contemporary Chinese model. Sustainable development is the main theme of the conceptual plan, and maintaining environmental and cultural resources, saving energy, encouraging the use of green technology, constructing green buildings are apparent throughout and can be seen not only in the design of the city, but in the residential neighborhood designs at block and building levels.

The purpose of NATO: From Regional to Global Security Provider is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Alliance's new vision (the new Strategic Concept) and common security impact - associated tasks to be undertaken within a short and longer term time horizon. The book serves as a relevant and timely study of the most pressing issues facing NATO today - including recent lessons gained. It provides recommendations for consideration and further discussion (i.e., the "what" and the "how" regarding future policy options for the North Atlantic Alliance). The intended audience includes international security policy-makers, government officials, elected leaders, academics, interested professionals, civil society and members of the public. Specifically, the book focuses on six topic areas. Part I, the Introduction, relates to conceptual and organizational changes, membership expansion and enlargement. Part II consists of emerging security challenges, including terrorism, piracy, homeland threats, cyber defense and information warfare, energy security, non-proliferation and countering WMD. Part III incorporates national and regional challenges such as the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. Part IV deals with military and non-military assets. It integrates capability development, burden sharing, common funding, ballistic missile defenses and the phased adaptive approach, non-strategic nuclear weapons, and a broad-based comprehensive approach to security. Part V covers multifaceted collaborative relationships between NATO and various governmental, inter-governmental, and non-governmental bodies. This section incorporates outreach and engagement with Russia, India, Pakistan, and China, as well as with other non-NATO countries, the Mediterranean Dialogue (MD), and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI). Formal and informal linkages with the EU, OSCE, and the UN are also essential features of such a cooperative activity. Additionally, the expanding participation of civil society and growing involvement of new key NATO interlocutors (e.g., NGOs, academics) have created new international partnering opportunities as a means of bolstering global security through innovative public-private partnerships. Part VI includes a Summary and Conclusions.

The purpose of NATO: From Regional to Global Security Provider is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Alliance's new vision (the new Strategic Concept) and common security impact - associated tasks to be undertaken within a short and longer term time horizon. The book serves as a relevant and timely study of the most pressing issues facing NATO today - including recent lessons gained. It provides recommendations for consideration and further discussion (i.e., the "what" and the "how" regarding future policy options for the North Atlantic Alliance). The intended audience includes international security policy-makers, government officials, elected leaders, academics, interested professionals, civil society and members of the public. Specifically, the book focuses on six topic areas. Part I, the Introduction, relates to conceptual and organizational changes, membership expansion and enlargement. Part II consists of emerging security challenges, including terrorism, piracy, homeland threats, cyber defense and information warfare, energy security, non-proliferation and countering WMD. Part III incorporates national and regional challenges such as the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. Part IV deals with military and non-military assets. It integrates capability development, burden sharing, common funding, ballistic missile defenses and the phased adaptive approach, non-strategic nuclear weapons, and a broad-based comprehensive approach to security. Part V covers multifaceted collaborative relationships between NATO and various governmental, inter-governmental, and non-governmental bodies. This section incorporates outreach and engagement with Russia, India, Pakistan, and China, as well as with other non-NATO countries, the Mediterranean Dialogue (MD), and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI). Formal and informal linkages with the EU, OSCE, and the UN are also essential features of such a cooperative activity. Additionally, the expanding participation of civil society and growing involvement of new key NATO interlocutors (e.g., NGOs, academics) have created new international partnering opportunities as a means of bolstering global security through innovative public-private partnerships. Part VI includes a Summary and Conclusions.

Credit Scoring and Its Applications is recognized as the bible of credit scoring. It contains a comprehensive review of the objectives, methods, and practical implementation of credit and behavioral scoring. The authors review principles of the statistical and operations research methods used in building scorecards, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. The book contains a description of practical problems encountered in building, using, and monitoring scorecards and examines some of the country-specific issues in bankruptcy, equal opportunities, and privacy legislation. It contains a discussion of economic theories of consumers' use of credit, and readers will gain an understanding of what lending institutions seek to achieve by using credit scoring and the changes in their objectives. New to the second edition are: lessons that can be learned for operations research model building from the global financial crisis current applications of scoring discussions on the Basel Accords and their requirements for scoring new methods for scorecard building and new expanded sections on ways of measuring scorecard performance, and survival analysis for credit scoring. Other unique features include methods of monitoring scorecards and deciding when to update them, as well as different applications of scoring, including direct marketing, profit scoring, tax inspection, prisoner release, and payment of fines.

Featuring international contributors from both industry and academia, Numerical Methods for Finance explores new and relevant numerical methods for the solution of practical problems in finance. It is one of the few books entirely devoted to numerical methods as applied to the financial field. Presenting state-of-the-art methods in this area, the book first discusses the coherent risk measures theory and how it applies to practical risk management. It then proposes a new method for pricing high-dimensional American options, followed by a description of the negative inter-risk diversification effects between credit and market risk. After evaluating counterparty risk for interest rate payoffs, the text considers strategies and issues concerning defined contribution pension plans and participating life insurance contracts. It also develops a computationally efficient swaption pricing technology, extracts the underlying asset price distribution implied by option prices, and proposes a hybrid GARCH model as well as a new affine point process framework. In addition, the book examines performance-dependent options, variance reduction, Value at Risk (VaR), the differential evolution optimizer, and put-call-futures parity arbitrage opportunities. Sponsored by DEPFA Bank, IDA Ireland, and Pioneer Investments, this concise and well-illustrated book equips practitioners with the necessary information to make important financial decisions.