The rapid advancement in encryption and network computing gave birth to new tools and products that have influenced the local and global economy alike. One recent and notable example is the emergence of virtual currencies, also known as cryptocurrencies or digital currencies. Virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, introduced a fundamental transformation that affected the way goods, services, and assets are exchanged. Virtual currencies are experiencing an increasing popularity in the financial markets and in portfolio management as can be classified as financial asset or commodities on a scale from pure medium of exchange advantages to pure store of value advantages. As a result of its distributed ledgers based on blockchain, cryptocurrencies offer some unique advantages to the economy, investors, and consumers, but also pose considerable risks to users and challenges for regulators when fitting the new technology into the old legal framework. Bitcoin for example may be useful in risk management and ideal for risk-averse investors in anticipation of negative shocks to the market. The core objective of this proposed book is to provide a comprehensive discussion on the important issues related to cryptocurrencies ranging from pricing, financial, legal to technological aspects.

This book presents research related to energy and environmental technologies in the context of market liberalization and global warming. It focuses on the development and efficient use of alternative energy sources, implementation of sustainable energy policies, power generation, and energy finance. Advances in Managing Energy and Climate Risks provides readers with the necessary information to use energy sources more efficiently, discover cleaner energy sources and their applications, and urge consumers and producers to make changes to reach a carbon-neutral economy through financial, technological, regulatory and tax incentives.

The World Health Organization confirmed COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, causing vast impact on international economy. The coronavirus pandemic has given rise to an unprecedented global health and economic crises. Apart from the toll of early deaths, economic activities have been stalled and stock markets have tumbled, while a wide range of energy markets - including oil, gas and renewable energy - have been severely affected. This crisis The pandemic has stressed the critical value of the health care infrastructure and electricity infrastructure. In view of the above, while governments and policy makers respond to these interlinked crises, they must not lose sight of a major challenge of our time: clean energy transitions.The pandemic has continued to to slow down the recovery of economic activities and consumption due to combination of many factors such as economic recession, expensive storage, warm climate, and enormous uncertainty. Mitigation and adaptation policies are crucial to overcoming the crisis. The commodity futures market will depend on the effectiveness of decision-makers' policies in containing the COVID-19 outbreak and reducing the negative effect of the pandemic on economic activities. This book seeks to throw light on the adverse effects of COVID-19 through enhanced scientific and multi-disciplinary knowledge. The chapters in the book show that the energy, stock, crypto-currencies markets are vulnerable to the surge in coronavirus deaths.

This book describes how the rapid advancement in encryption and network computing gave birth to new tools and products that have influenced the local and global economy alike. One recent and notable example is the emergence of virtual currencies (such as Bitcoin) also known as cryptocurrencies. Virtual currencies introduced a fundamental transformation that affected the way goods, services and assets are exchanged. As a result of its distributed ledgers based on blockchain, cryptocurrencies not only offer some unique advantages to the economy, investors, and consumers, but also pose considerable risks to users and challenges for regulators when fitting the new technology into the old legal framework. The core of this proposed book is to present and discuss the evidence on financial asset capabilities of virtual currencies. The contributors of this volume analyze several interesting and timely issues such as the particularities of virtual currencies and their statistical characteristics; the diversification benefits of virtual currencies; the behavior and dependence structure between virtual currencies and the financial markets; the economic implications of virtual currencies, their effects, their price risk, and contagion spillovers in a unified and comprehensive framework; the future of virtual currencies and their distributed ledgers technology.

This book presents research related to energy and environmental technologies in the context of market liberalization and global warming. It focuses on the development and efficient use of alternative energy sources, implementation of sustainable energy policies, power generation, and energy finance. Advances in Managing Energy and Climate Risks provides readers with the necessary information to use energy sources more efficiently, discover cleaner energy sources and their applications, and urge consumers and producers to make changes to reach a carbon-neutral economy through financial, technological, regulatory and tax incentives.

This book describes how the rapid advancement in encryption and network computing gave birth to new tools and products that have influenced the local and global economy alike. One recent and notable example is the emergence of virtual currencies (such as Bitcoin) also known as cryptocurrencies. Virtual currencies introduced a fundamental transformation that affected the way goods, services and assets are exchanged. As a result of its distributed ledgers based on blockchain, cryptocurrencies not only offer some unique advantages to the economy, investors, and consumers, but also pose considerable risks to users and challenges for regulators when fitting the new technology into the old legal framework. The core of this proposed book is to present and discuss the evidence on financial asset capabilities of virtual currencies. The contributors of this volume analyze several interesting and timely issues such as the particularities of virtual currencies and their statistical characteristics; the diversification benefits of virtual currencies; the behavior and dependence structure between virtual currencies and the financial markets; the economic implications of virtual currencies, their effects, their price risk, and contagion spillovers in a unified and comprehensive framework; the future of virtual currencies and their distributed ledgers technology.

The link between commodities prices and the business cycle, including variables such as real GDP, industrial production, unemployment, inflation, and market uncertainty, has often been debated in the macroeconomic literature. To quantify the impact of commodities on the economy, one can distinguish different modeling approaches. First, commodities can be represented as the pinnacle of cross-sectional financial asset prices. Second, price fluctuations due to seasonal variations, dramatic market changes, political and regulatory decisions, or technological shocks may adversely impact producers who use commodities as input. This latter effect creates the so-called 'commodities risk'. Additionally, commodities price fluctuations may spread to other sectors in the economy, via contagion effects. Besides, stronger investor interest in commodities may create closer integration with conventional asset markets; as a result, the financialization process also enhances the correlation between commodity markets and financial markets.Our objective in this book, Risk Factors and Contagion in Commodity Markets and Stocks Markets, lies in answering the following research questions: What are the interactions between commodities and stock market sentiment? Do some of these markets move together overtime? Did the financialization in energy commodities occur after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis? These questions are essential to understand whether commodities are driven only by their fundamentals, or whether there is also a systemic component influenced by the volatility present within the stock markets.

This book analyses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in different areas of Finance emphasizing the contagion effect in capital markets. The volume presents evidence-based case studies from the global financial crisis that followed after the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.

This book analyses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in different areas of Finance emphasizing the contagion effect in capital markets. The volume presents evidence-based case studies from the global financial crisis that followed after the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.