What is the best way to auction an asset? How should a group of people organize themselves to ensure the best provision of public goods? How should exchanges be organized? In An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design, Tilman Börgers addresses these questions and more through an exploration of the economic theory of mechanism design. Mechanism design is reverse game theory. Whereas game theory takes the rules of the game as a given and makes predictions about the behavior o...

The worlds of Wall Street and The City have always held a certain allure, but in recent years have left an indelible mark on the wider public consciousness and there has been a need to become more financially literate. The quantitative nature of complex financial transactions makes them a fascinating subject area for mathematicians of all types, whether for general interest or because of the enormous monetary rewards on offer. An Introduction to Quantitative Finance concerns financial deri...

This book focuses on tools and techniques for building regression models using real-world data and assessing their validity. A key theme throughout the book is that it makes sense to base inferences or conclusions only on valid models. Plots are shown to be an important tool for both building regression models and assessing their validity. We shall see that deciding what to plot and how each plot should be interpreted will be a major challenge. In order to overcome this challenge we shall ...

Credit Risk Management: Basic Concepts is the first book of a series of three with the objective of providing an overview of all aspects, steps, and issues that should be considered when undertaking credit risk management, including the Basel II Capital Accord, which all major banks must comply with in 2008. The introduction of the recently suggested Basel II Capital Accord has raised many issues and concerns about how to appropriately manage credit risk. Managing credit risk is o...

This highly accessible and innovative text with supporting web site uses Excel (R) to teach the core concepts of econometrics without advanced mathematics. It enables students to use Monte Carlo simulations in order to understand the data generating process and sampling distribution. Intelligent repetition of concrete examples effectively conveys the properties of the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator and the nature of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. Coverage includes omitted ...

Focusing on what actuaries need in practice, this introductory account provides readers with essential tools for handling complex problems and explains how simulation models can be created, used and re-used (with modifications) in related situations. The book begins by outlining the basic tools of modelling and simulation, including a discussion of the Monte Carlo method and its use. Part II deals with general insurance and Part III with life insurance and financial risk. Algorithms that c...

Many economic theories depend on the presence or absence of a unit root for their validity, and econometric and statistical theory undergo considerable changes when unit roots are present. Thus, knowledge on unit roots has become so important, necessitating an extensive, compact, and nontechnical book on this subject. This book is rested on this motivation and introduces the literature on unit roots in a comprehensive manner to both empirical and theoretical researchers in economics and ot...

Time series econometrics is a rapidly evolving field. Particularly, the cointegration revolution has had a substantial impact on applied analysis. Hence, no textbook has managed to cover the full range of methods in current use and explain how to proceed in applied domains. This gap in the literature motivates the present volume. The methods are sketched out, reminding the reader of the ideas underlying them and giving sufficient background for empirical work. The treatment can also be use...

Students in both social and natural sciences often seek regression methods to explain the frequency of events, such as visits to a doctor, auto accidents, or new patents awarded. This book, now in its second edition, provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of models and methods to interpret such data. The authors combine theory and practice to make sophisticated methods of analysis accessible to researchers and practitioners working with widely different types of data and so...

Providing a practical introduction to state space methods as applied to unobserved components time series models, also known as structural time series models, this book introduces time series analysis using state space methodology to readers who are neither familiar with time series analysis, nor with state space methods. The only background required in order to understand the material presented in the book is a basic knowledge of classical linear regression models, of which a brief review...

This book provides an overview of three generations of spatial econometric models: models based on cross-sectional data, static models based on spatial panels and dynamic spatial panel data models. The book not only presents different model specifications and their corresponding estimators, but also critically discusses the purposes for which these models can be used and how their results should be interpreted.

'Big data' poses challenges that require both classical multivariate methods and contemporary techniques from machine learning and engineering. This modern text equips you for the new world - integrating the old and the new, fusing theory and practice and bridging the gap to statistical learning. The theoretical framework includes formal statements that set out clearly the guaranteed 'safe operating zone' for the methods and allow you to assess whether data is in the zone, or near enough. ...