Modern Finance and Risk Management is dedicated to our colleague, academic mentor, and adviser Professor Hermann Locarek-Junge. During his academic career, Hermann Locarek-Junge published several important contributions to the field of risk management and portfolio management and served as the chairman and board member of the German Finance Association (DGF) and the Data Science Society (Gesellschaft für Klassifikation).A short foreword by the mentors of Hermann Locarek-Junge and an introduction by the editors mark the beginning of the Festschrift. The first section on Modern Finance includes chapters on asset management, entrepreneurship, and behavioural finance. The second section on Modern Risk Management contains seven contributions covering considerations of risk measurement, risk management, and regulation. Finally, the third section includes topics on commodities and energy finance.This Festschrift comprises 20 original contributions of notable scholars in finance who have worked with Hermann Locarek-Junge over the last four decades. Due to numerous connections to practice and applications, Modern Finance and Risk Management is relevant and attractive not only to academics and researchers but also to practitioners in industry and banking.

Islamic finance is one of the fastest-growing sectors in international banking and finance. Owing to the increasing availability and ease of access to Islamic services, Islamic finance has become increasingly important not only in Muslim countries, but around the world, making it a global industry. Under the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as in some regions, such as the Middle East and North Africa, a dual financial system is implemented, where Sharia-compliant products are marketed alongside conventional financial systems.In this thoroughly researched collection of chapters, researchers from around the world examine the role of Islamic finance in the economies and prospects of different companies. They discuss Islamic finance literature from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The theoretical section of the book consists of conceptual chapters that enable readers to critically evaluate and expand their understanding of accounting and finance. The chapters in the empirical section of this handbook discuss and interpret empirical evidence to provide clear implications for practice, research, and society. This section bridges the gap between theory and practice and offers suggestions for future research. Islamic Accounting and Finance is geared towards scholars and students, but it is also of use to banking and finance practitioners.

This book aims to provide insights on the latest developments in Financial Technology (FinTech). It is a collection of scientific articles covering the primary areas of finance. The following key themes are covered in the book: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, FinTech Regulation and Smart Contracts, Cryptocurrencies, and FinTech in Financial Services. FinTech is a rapidly developing industry that uses technological innovations to improve financial activities and make financial services more accessible and affordable to businesses and individuals. This book contributes to the body of knowledge in FinTech, offering readers a chance to review and rethink the topics in question.

It is a great privilege and pleasure to write a foreword for a book honor ing Wolfgang Gaul on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Wolfgang Gaul is currently Professor of Business Administration and Management Science and the Head of the Institute of Decision Theory and Management Science, Faculty of Economics, University of Karlsruhe (TH), Germany. He is, by any measure, one of the most distinguished and eminent scholars in the world today. Wolfgang Gaul has been instrumental in numerous leading research initia tives and has achieved an unprecedented level of success in facilitating com munication among researchers in diverse disciplines from around the world. A particularly remarkable and unique aspect of his work is that he has been a leading scholar in such diverse areas of research as graph theory and net work models, reliability theory, stochastic optimization, operations research, probability theory, sampling theory, cluster analysis, scaling and multivariate data analysis. His activities have been directed not only at these and other theoretical topics, but also at applications of statistical and mathematical tools to a multitude of important problems in computer science (e.g., w- mining), business research (e.g., market segmentation), management science (e.g., decision support systems) and behavioral sciences (e.g., preference mea surement and data mining). All of his endeavors have been accomplished at the highest level of professional excellence.

"Data Analysis" in the broadest sense is the general term for a field of activities of ever-increasing importance in a time called the information age. It covers new areas with such trendy labels as, e.g., data mining or web mining as well as traditional directions emphazising, e.g., classification or knowledge organization. Leading researchers in data analysis have contributed to this volume and delivered papers on aspects ranging from scientific modeling to practical application. They have devoted their latest contributions to a book edited to honor a colleague and friend, Hans-Hermann Bock, who has been active in this field for nearly thirty years.

The COVID-19 global health pandemic, which started in late December 2019, forced many countries to adopt unusual measures such as social distancing and strict lockdowns. It changed many of our certainties and practices, including the foundations of the market-led version of capitalism, by bringing social and health considerations back to the forefront of firms' considerations, investors' strategies and governments' priorities. Under the effects of this unprecedented crisis, all sectors of finance and real economy have been seriously affected.Health uncertainties and their increasing consequences for human life and activities require stronger and faster actions to shape pathways towards sustainability and better resilience. The COVID-19 health crisis is a visible part of a greater iceberg: the World Health Organization has tracked, over recent years, a large number of epidemic events around the world, suggesting that many other similar diseases could appear and evolve in the future from epidemic to pandemic in a globalized world.Financial Transformations Beyond the COVID-19 Health Crisis was specifically designed to provide the readers with new results, recent findings and future outlook on the impacts of COVID-19 on financial markets, firm behaviors, and finance and investment strategies. It favors multidimensional perspectives and brings together conceptual, empirical and policy-oriented chapters, using quantitative and qualitative methods alike. This is a timely and comprehensive collection of theoretical, empirical and policy contributions from renowned scholars around the world, and provides the thoughts and insights required to rethink the financial sector in the event of new shocks of the same nature.

INTERMITTENT DEMAND FORECASTING The first text to focus on the methods and approaches of intermittent, rather than fast, demand forecasting Intermittent Demand Forecasting is for anyone who is interested in improving forecasts of intermittent demand products, and enhancing the management of inventories. Whether you are a practitioner, at the sharp end of demand planning, a software designer, a student, an academic teaching operational research or operations management courses, or a researcher in this field, we hope that the book will inspire you to rethink demand forecasting. If you do so, then you can contribute towards significant economic and environmental benefits. No prior knowledge of intermittent demand forecasting or inventory management is assumed in this book. The key formulae are accompanied by worked examples to show how they can be implemented in practice. For those wishing to understand the theory in more depth, technical notes are provided at the end of each chapter, as well as an extensive and up-to-date collection of references for further study. Software developments are reviewed, to give an appreciation of the current state of the art in commercial and open source software. “Intermittent demand forecasting may seem like a specialized area but actually is at the center of sustainability efforts to consume less and to waste less. Boylan and Syntetos have done a superb job in showing how improvements in inventory management are pivotal in achieving this. Their book covers both the theory and practice of intermittent demand forecasting and my prediction is that it will fast become the bible of the field.” —Spyros Makridakis, Professor, University of Nicosia, and Director, Institute for the Future and the Makridakis Open Forecasting Center (MOFC). “We have been able to support our clients by adopting many of the ideas discussed in this excellent book, and implementing them in our software. I am sure that these ideas will be equally helpful for other supply chain software vendors and for companies wanting to update and upgrade their capabilities in forecasting and inventory management.” —Suresh Acharya, VP, Research and Development, Blue Yonder. “As product variants proliferate and the pace of business quickens, more and more items have intermittent demand. Boylan and Syntetos have long been leaders in extending forecasting and inventory methods to accommodate this new reality. Their book gathers and clarifies decades of research in this area, and explains how practitioners can exploit this knowledge to make their operations more efficient and effective.” —Thomas R. Willemain, Professor Emeritus, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.