Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.

This is a classical reprint edition of the original 1971 edition of An Introduction to Bayesian Inference in Economics. This historical volume is an early introduction to Bayesian inference and methodology which still has lasting value for today's statistician and student. The coverage ranges from the fundamental concepts and operations of Bayesian inference to analysis of applications in specific econometric problems and the testing of hypotheses and models.

Incorporates estimation risk in portfolio choice and also covers a risk measure for retail investment products, understanding and exploiting momentum in stock returns. This book includes: Introduction - Corporate restructuring; mergers and acquisitions in Europe; and the performance of acquisitive companies in the US.

Recent changes in technology, along with the opening up of many regions previously closed to investment, have led to explosive growth in the international movement of capital. Flows from foreign direct investment and debt and equity financing can bring countries substantial gains by augmenting local savings and by improving technology and incentives. Investing companies acquire market access, lower cost inputs, and opportunities for profitable introductions of production methods in the countries where they invest. But, as was underscored recently by the economic and financial crises in several Asian countries, capital flows can also bring risks. Although there is no simple explanation of the currency crisis in Asia, it is clear that fixed exchange rates and chronic deficits increased the likelihood of a breakdown. Similarly, during the 1970s, the United States and other industrial countries loaned OPEC surpluses to borrowers in Latin America. But when the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates to control soaring inflation, the result was a widespread debt moratorium in Latin America as many countries throughout the region struggled to pay the high interest on their foreign loans. International Capital Flows contains recent work by eminent scholars and practitioners on the experience of capital flows to Latin America, Asia, and eastern Europe. These papers discuss the role of banks, equity markets, and foreign direct investment in international capital flows, and the risks that investors and others face with these transactions. By focusing on capital flows' productivity and determinants, and the policy issues they raise, this collection is a valuable resource for economists, policymakers, and financial market participants.

"Nobel Prize-winning financial economist William Sharpe shows that investment professionals cannot make good portfolio choices unless they understand the determinants of asset prices." -- Provided by publisher.

One of the few books on the subject, Country Risk Assessment combines the theoretical and practical tools for managing international country risk exposure. - Offers a comprehensive discussion of the specific mechanisms that apply to country risk assessment. - Discusses various techniques associated with global investment strategy. - Presents and analyses the various sources of country risk. - Provides an in depth coverage of information sources and country risk service providers. - Gives techniques for forecasting country financial crises. - Includes practical examples and case studies. - Provides a comprehensive review of all existing methods including the techniques on the cutting-edge Market Based Approaches such as KMV, CreditMetrics, CountryMetrics and CreditRisk+.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, many financial institutions have been exploring new methods to measure investment product risk. Lawmakers have been developing new rules that protect investors better than before. The purpose is to mitigate the risk of financial institutions that distribute investment products to their clients. This book presents professional views on investment product risk and analyzes complex investment product risk from various perspectives. Contributed by lawyers, risk managers, IT engineers and scholars, this book is an essential-read for financial regulators, bankers, investment advisors, financial engineers, risk managers, students and researchers.