Fifteen years have passed since the last major treatise on starch was published. Since then, knowledge of the molecular and macromolecular structures of starch; exploration of new sources of commercial starch; modification of the properties of starches via chemical, enzymic, genetic, and physical means; and investigations into potential uses of new products have proliferated. The Handbook of Starch Science and Technology explores new developments in starch science and technologies...

This book rehabilitates beta as a definition of systemic risk by using particle physics to evaluate discrete components of financial risk. Much of the frustration with beta stems from the failure to disaggregate its discrete components; conventional beta is often treated as if it were "atomic" in the original Greek sense: uncut and indivisible. By analogy to the Standard Model of particle physics theory's three generations of matter and the three-way interaction of quarks, Chen divides bet...

This survey of portfolio theory, from its modern origins through more sophisticated, “postmodern” incarnations, evaluates portfolio risk according to the first four moments of any statistical distribution: mean, variance, skewness, and excess kurtosis. In pursuit of financial models that more accurately describe abnormal markets and investor psychology, this book bifurcates beta on either side of mean returns. It then evaluates this traditional risk measure according to its relative volati...

"Building a Dream Community: Expand Our Dream" chronicles the remarkable growth of Friends of Children with Special Needs (FCSN) during the years 2021-2025 and celebrates the organization's 30th anniversary. As a sequel to "Friends of Children with Special Needs: Building a Dream Community," this volume continues the story of how a small support group founded by Chinese American parents in Silicon Valley evolved into one of the largest nonprofit organizations serving individuals with speci...

The efficient markets hypothesis has been the central proposition in finance for nearly thirty years. It states that securities prices in financial markets must equal fundamental values, either because all investors are rational or because arbitrage eliminates pricing anomalies. This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance. This approach starts with an observation that the assumptions of investor rationality and perfect arbitrage are ove...

An authoritative graduate textbook on information choice, an exciting frontier of research in economics and financeMost theories in economics and finance predict what people will do, given what they know about the world around them. But what do people know about their environments? The study of information choice seeks to answer this question, explaining why economic players know what they know—and how the information they have affects collective outcomes. Instead ...

A concise introduction to modeling over-the-counter marketsOver-the-counter (OTC) markets for derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, and repurchase agreements played a significant role in the global financial crisis. Rather than being traded through a centralized institution such as a stock exchange, OTC trades are negotiated privately between market participants who may be unaware of prices that are currently available elsewhere in the market. In these rela...

Make the post-meltdown markets work for you, using the unparalleled insight of today’s top global investing experts!“This book provides a collection of papers that examine trading execution, technical trading, and trading strategies, as well as algorithms in different markets (equities, forex, fixed income, exchange traded funds, derivatives, and commodities) around the world. This is particularly relevant given the recent explosion in trading volumes.”

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 abo...

Asset prices are driven by public news and information that is often dispersed among many market participants. These agents try to infer each other's information by analyzing price processes. In the past two decades, theoretical research in financial economics has significantly advanced our understanding of the informational aspects of price processes. This book provides a detailed and up-to-date survey of this important body of literature. The book begins by demonstrating how to model asy...

This book presents the theory and evidence on the effect of market liquidity and liquidity risk on asset prices and on overall securities market performance. Illiquidity means incurring a high transaction cost, which includes a large price impact when trading and facing a long time to unload a large position. Liquidity risk is higher if a security becomes more illiquid when it needs to be traded in the future, which will raise trading cost. The book shows that higher illiquidity and greate...

The Economics of Financial Markets presents a concise overview of capital markets, suitable for advanced undergraduates and for beginning graduate students in financial economics. Following a brief overview of financial markets - their microstructure and the randomness of stock market prices - this textbook explores how the economics of uncertainty can be applied to financial decision-making. The mean-variance model of portfolio selection is discussed, with analysis extended to the capital...