Economics

Provides statistical tools and techniques needed to understand today's financial markets

The Second Edition of this critically acclaimed text provides a comprehensive and systematic introduction to financial econometric models and their applications in modeling and predicting financial time series data. This latest edition continues to emphasize empirical financial data and focuses on real-world examples. Following this approach, readers will master key aspects of financial time series, including volatility modeling, neural network applications, market microstructure and high-frequency financial data, continuous-time models and Ito's Lemma, Value at Risk, multiple returns analysis, financial factor models, and econometric modeling via computation-intensive methods.

The author begins with the basic characteristics of financial time series data, setting the foundation for the three main topics:

• Analysis and application of univariate financial time series
• Return series of multiple assets
• Bayesian inference in finance methods

This new edition is a thoroughly revised and updated text, including the addition of S-Plus® commands and illustrations. Exercises have been thoroughly updated and expanded and include the most current data, providing readers with more opportunities to put the models and methods into practice. Among the new material added to the text, readers will find:

• Consistent covariance estimation under heteroscedasticity and serial correlation
• Alternative approaches to volatility modeling
• Financial factor models
• State-space models
• Kalman filtering
• Estimation of stochastic diffusion models

The tools provided in this text aid readers in developing a deeper understanding of financial markets through firsthand experience in working with financial data. This is an ideal textbook for MBA students as well as a reference for researchers and professionals in business and finance.

Planning by civil governments, businesses, and the military services has been considered separately in both theory and practice. Those concerned with each of these applications have had little contact with those in the others, despite the common concerns and characteristics of their respective practices.

A leading figure in the research and education in planning, Branch draws upon his experience in civil, corporate, and military planning to provide a comprehensive guide to the key aspects of planning. This text is invaluable to those engaged in governmental and business planning and to students working toward careers in urban and regional planning, public administration, business management, and other fields concerned with planning.

Don't Burn our Bridges: The Case for Caribbean Carriers argues that a tourism-dependent region comprised largely of a group of islands must, in its own best interest, retain ownership of key aspects of its air access in spite of the costs and challenges involved in so doing. Air transportation is the glue that cements the tourism market to the destination, but it is also the aerial bridge connecting the territories and peoples of a single market and economy. Often regional airlines are forced to offer a mixture of commercial and social routes, which makes profitability difficult. The social service they provide is critical, however, and public sector shareholders should not measure their return on investment simply in terms of the bottom line. Holder rejects a widely held view that Caribbean governments, should not support their own carriers financially. Instead, he argues that because of their overall contribution to development generally, the air transportation industry should be counted among those companies in the region which are too big (and important) to be allowed to fail. Don't Burn Our Bridges documents the history of Caribbean airlines and attempts to demystify the complexities of such concepts as deregulation, yield management, hedging of oil prices, fare setting, fuel surcharges and a la carte pricing, while making the point that running successful airlines has defeated some of the world's most brilliant business minds. Holder also explores the impact of the global economic meltdown of 2008-2009 on air transportation and Caribbean tourism, and proposes a way forward for air transportation in the Caribbean community.

The past decade has witnessed a paradigm shift at the World Bank from a focus on structural adjustment to a focus on poverty reduction. As evidenced by the Bank’s 2001 report, Engendering Development: Through Rights, Resource and Voice, an increased attention to gender issues has been an important part of this process.

This book brings together a range of responses from feminist economists and other social researchers on the issues raised in this report. With contributions from highly esteemed scholars such as Eudine Barriteau, Diane Elson, Gale Summerfield, and Zafiris Tzannatos, this anthology critically examines the relationships between gender, growth, development, and the World Bank by:

• developing a history of the World Bank’s perspectives on gender
• empirically evaluating the impacts of the Banks’ policies on three different regions of the world
• exploring the ideological and methodological commitments of the report from a variety of feminist and interdisciplinary social science perspectives
• enquiring into future directions for feminist economics research.

The book shows the importance and challenge of taking gender into account in development theory and policy. Its complex and nuanced analyses of the social relations of gender in a global context will be an important resource for policymakers, activists, and scholars alike.

As we approach the twenty-first century, many see a world beset by economic stagnation and explosive population growth. Based on the historical experience of both developed and developing nations, this book offers a sharply differing view. Although the future is not without serious dangers, Easterlin sees rapid economic growth as successfully sweeping the world, with explosive population growth as a passing phenomenon. The question remains, what will the world be like when economic growth is triumphant? Will humanity, freed from material need, turn to nonmaterial pursuits, as many have envisaged? The answer suggested by experience to date is No. Instead, the world will be one in which ever-growing abundance is continually outpaced by ever-rising material aspirations, a world stuck on a hedonic treadmill. Taking a longer-term view than most literature on economic development, Easterlin stresses the enormous contrast between the collective experience of the last half century and what has gone before. An economic historian and demographer, the author writes in the tradition of the "new economic history, " drawing on economic theory and quantitative evidence to interpret the historical experience of economic and population growth. He reaches beyond the usual disciplinary limits to draw, as appropriate, on sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, and the history of science. This work will be of interest not only to social scientists but to all readers concerned with where we have been and where we are going.

Attempts to reveal how specific features of individual technologies have shaped a number of variables of great concern to economists: the rate of productivity improvement; the nature of the learning process underlying technological change; the speed of technology transfer; and the effectiveness of influential government policies.

A thorough and comprehensive introduction to the main international economic institutions covering their functions and their influence in international economic affairs. Each chapter focuses on an institution, providing a full description of its origins, major responsibilities, management and financial structure, and its role in the international financial market place.

International Money and Finance, Third Edition, is an invaluable resource for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates studying International Economy and Finance.

Make more informed project investment decisions by knowing what issues to examine in the planning process and how to analyze their impacts

Poor or insufficient planning is primarily responsible for the inordinate number of idle and rusting capital facilities around the world, with investment decisions often made on the basis of either intuition or inadequate analysis. Investment Project Design: A Guide to Financial and Economic Analysis with Constraints alerts potential investors and other stakeholders to precipitous changes in the investment milieu as a result of constraints on resources and infrastructure, economic and political turmoil, and population growth. The guide

Investment Project Design is the ultimate resource in the methods of designing and appraising investment projects