In the updated second edition of Don Chance’s well-received Essays in Derivatives, the author once again keeps derivatives simple enough for the beginner, but offers enough in-depth information to satisfy even the most experienced investor. This book provides up-to-date and detailed coverage of various financial products related to derivatives and contains completely new chapters covering subjects that include why derivatives are used, forward and futures pricing, operational risk, and best practices.

This book is a collection of original papers by Robert Jarrow that contributed to significant advances in financial economics. Divided into three parts, Part I concerns option pricing theory and its foundations. The papers here deal with the famous Black-Scholes-Merton model, characterizations of the American put option, and the first applications of arbitrage pricing theory to market manipulation and liquidity risk.Part II relates to pricing derivatives under stochastic interest rates. Included is the paper introducing the famous HeathOCoJarrowOCoMorton (HJM) model, together with papers on topics like the characterization of the difference between forward and futures prices, the forward price martingale measure, and applications of the HJM model to foreign currencies and commodities.Part III deals with the pricing of financial derivatives considering both stochastic interest rates and the likelihood of default. Papers cover the reduced form credit risk model, in particular the original Jarrow and Turnbull model, the Markov model for credit rating transitions, counterparty risk, and diversifiable default risk.

Traditional theory suggests that more profitable banks should have lower risk-taking incentives. Then why did many profitable banks choose to invest in untested financial instruments before the crisis, realizing significant losses? We attempt to reconcile theory and evidence. In our setup, banks are endowed with a fixed core business. They take risk by levering up to engage in risky ‘side activities’(such as market-based investments) alongside the core business. A more profitable core business allows a bank to borrow more and take side risks on a larger scale, offsetting lower incentives to take risk of given size. Consequently, more profitable banks may have higher risk-taking incentives. The framework is consistent with cross-sectional patterns of bank risk-taking in the run up to the recent financial crisis.

Modeling the Term Structure of Interest Rates provides a comprehensive review of the continuous-time modeling techniques of the term structure applicable to value and hedge default-free bonds and other interest rate derivatives.