The book considers when governments should give guarantees to private investors. After describing the history of guarantees, and the challenges the politics and psychology create for good decisions, the book sets out a principles for allocating risk (and therefore guarantees), techniques for valuing guarantees, and rules to encourage good decisions.

In "Investors and Markets", Nobel Prize-winning financial economist William Sharpe shows that investment professionals cannot make good portfolio choices unless they understand the determinants of asset prices. But until now, asset-price analysis has largely been inaccessible to everyone except PhDs in financial economics. In this book, Sharpe changes that by setting out his state-of-the-art approach to asset pricing in a nonmathematical form that will be comprehensible to a broad range of investment professionals, including investment advisors…

While mainstream financial theories and applications assume that asset returns are normally distributed and individual preferences are quadratic, the overwhelming empirical evidence shows otherwise. Indeed, most of the asset returns exhibit "fat-tails" distributions and investors exhibit asymmetric preferences. These empirical findings lead to the development of a new area of research dedicated to the introduction of higher order moments in portfolio theory and asset pricing models. Multi-moment asset pricing is a revolutionary new way of model…

This is the first comprehensive introduction to the concepts, theories, and applications of pricing and revenue optimization. From the initial success of "yield management" in the commercial airline industry down to more recent successes of markdown management and dynamic pricing, the application of mathematical analysis to optimize pricing has become increasingly important across many different industries. But, since pricing and revenue optimization has involved the use of sophisticated mathematical techniques, the topic has remained largely i…

Focusing on the examples of China, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, and Turkey, Pricing Irrigation Water provides a clear methodology for studying farm-level demand for irrigation water. This book is the first to link the macroeconomics of policies affecting trade to the microeconomics of water demand for irrigation and water user rights. This type of market reform, the contributors argue, will result in growing economic benefits to both rural and urban households.

In Selling the Intangible Company, Thomas Metz helps entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to better understand the process of selling a company whose value is strategic. He addresses all the key issues surrounding the sale of a company in which the value is in its technology, its software, and its know-how–but has not yet shown up on its balance sheet. Filled with in-depth insights and expert advice, this book provides essential information for business professionals and technology CEOs who need to understand the nuances of selling a company…

"Stochastic Calculus for Finance" evolved from the first ten years of the Carnegie Mellon Professional Master's program in Computational Finance. The content of this book has been used successfully with students whose mathematics background consists of calculus and calculus-based probability. The text gives both precise statements of results, plausibility arguments, and even some proofs, but more importantly intuitive explanations developed and refine through classroom experience with this material are provided. The book includes a self-contain…

Asset pricing theory abounds with elegant mathematical models. The logic is so compelling that the models are widely used in policy, from banking, investments, and corporate finance to government. To what extent, however, can these models predict what actually happens in financial markets? In The Paradox of Asset Pricing, a leading financial researcher argues forcefully that the empirical record is weak at best. Peter Bossaerts undertakes the most thorough, technically sound investigation in many years into the scientific character of the prici…

For MBA or advanced undergraduate courses in Pricing Strategy or Pricing and Product Policy. Practical in focus and lively in style, this text provides a comprehensive, managerially-focused, integrated, step-by-step guide to pricing analysis and strategy development. Features and Benefits NEW - Updated, practical guide to legal limitations on pricing written by a leading industry consultant and practicing attorney (Gene Zellic) on this subject. NEW - New chapter on "Pricing in and through Channels of Distribution.". NEW - Expanded a…

KEY MESSAGE: Theory of Asset Pricing unifies the central tenets and techniques of asset valuation into a single, comprehensive resource that is ideal for the first PhD course in asset pricing. Single-Period Portfolio Choice and Asset Pricing: Expected Utility and Risk Aversion; Mean-Variance Analysis; CAPM, Arbitrage, and Linear Factor Models; Consumption-Savings and State Pricing; Multiperiod Consumption, Portfolio Choice, and Asset Pricing: A Multiperiod Discrete Time Model of Consupmtion; Multiperiod Market Equilibrium; Contingent Cl…