Simple Introductions

Financial Economics: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the central ideas and methods of financial economics, with examples and calculations, empirical evidence, and over 20 diagrams to support the analysis.Understand consumption and investment decisions, intertemporal choice, indifference curves and the marginal rate of substitution, production possibilities and the marginal rate of transformation, rates of return, the financial market line, borrowing and lending, and the Fisher Separation Theorem.Portfolio theory examines expected returns, standard deviation and variance risk, covariance, correlation, asset diversification, market portfolio, a risk-free asset, the capital market line, and the Tobin Separation Theorem.The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) explores diversifiable and non-diversifiable risk, the beta risk factor, calculation of an asset's expected return, the security market line, asset evaluation, and empirical evidence on the CAPM.Market efficiency looks at the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), weak, semi-strong, and strong form efficiency, and the literature on technical and fundamental analysis strategies to beat the market. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Investment Appraisal: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the methods and uses of investment appraisal, with examples and calculations throughout.Understand the accounting rate of return (ARR), the payback period (PP), the net present value (NPV), and the internal rate of return (IRR). Work through four extended example studies for each approach, and learn how to easily find the NPV or IRR with Excel.Compare the strengths and weaknesses of each of the four appraisal methods, and examine potential errors, risk management, and project management. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Corporate Finance Formulas: A Simple Introduction includes over 75 formulas in the field of corporate finance, alongside relevant definitions and explanations. The formulas cover the topics of return and risk, cost of equity, cost of capital, capital structure, payout policy, valuation, and mergers. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Marketing Management Concepts and Tools: A Simple Introduction presents the central ideas and methods of marketing management. Discover the marketing basics, management goals, consumer-led marketing, strategic planning, and segmentation, targeting and positioning.Examine market dynamics and competitive strategy, the creation of a brand, consumer behaviour, business to business marketing, and market research.Look at market innovation, services, internet marketing, communications and advertising, distribution, pricing, and the future of marketing. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Investment Formulas: A Simple Introduction includes over 80 formulas in the investment field, alongside relevant definitions and explanations. The formulas cover the topics of historical return measures, investment models, portfolio performance evaluation, firm and stock valuation, bond portfolio management, derivatives, and option valuation. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Environmental Economics: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the central theories and methods of environmental economics, with examples, equations, and diagrams to support the analysis.Understand the problem of environmental degradation, and why environmental externalities and market failure cause pollution to spiral out of control.Examine the effectiveness of the polluters pay principle and a range of pollution control instruments, including bargaining, Pigovian taxation, tradable emissions permits, and command and control policy. Compare how each of the methods fare on cost efficiency, dynamic efficiency, equity, and performance under uncertainty.Explore efficient environmental management, and see how renewable natural resources can be harvested efficiently, and how a tragedy of the commons scenario can be avoided. Understand the conditions of the Hotelling rule for optimal extraction of non-renewable natural resources.Look at the stages of cost-benefit analysis and environmental policy valuation, and how the impacts of projects are valued using stated preference, revealed preference, or production function approaches. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Security Valuation: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the principles and methods of security valuation, with examples and calculations to support the analysis.Compare the three-step asset valuation process with the stock picking process, and understand why economy analysis, industry analysis, and company analysis are all essential parts of valuation.Examine the theory of valuation, determine the required rate of return, understand the stream of returns and the return on equity with the DuPont system, and reach an investment decision.Learn how to value bonds, and preferred stock. Value common stock with the Dividend Discount Model and Gordon Growth Model. Model supernormal growth, and firms with different capital structures.Explore the benefits of relative valuation, and understand price-to-earnings, price-to-cash flow, price-to-book, and price-to-sales methods. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Corporate Finance: A Simple Introduction provides an accessible guide to the principles and methods of corporate finance, with equations and examples, empirical evidence, and diagrams to illustrate the analysis.Examine the traditional theory of optimal debt and equity financing, how Modigliani and Miller's theory on capital structure differs, and the impact corporate and personal taxes or market imperfections may have on the optimal capital structure.Understand dividend irrelevance theory, the factors driving the dividend decision, and why companies may prefer share repurchases to paying dividends.Explore option theory with long and short calls and puts explained, and the Black-Scholes option pricing model and the factors affecting it detailed. See the variety of ways traders may use options, as speculators make profits betting on price movements, hedgers eliminate risk, and arbitrageurs may make risk-free profits exploiting undervalued options.Look at why companies seek mergers & acquisitions, the merger process they undertake, how a firm can improve its chances of making an acquisition, and some takeover defences for resistant firms. Empirical evidence on merger performance is presented, and alternative explanations examined. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Applied Econometrics: A Simple Introduction offers a detailed guide to some of the central methods and applications of applied econometrics, with theory, models, calculations, and graphs to support analysis.S&P 500 equities, GSCI commodities, and US Treasury Bill risk-free rate datasets are assessed for their data distributions, autocorrelation, and stationarity. The Engle-Granger 2 step method, Johansen test and the Vector Error Correction Model test for and correct cointegration.ARMA models determine the optimal AR and MA processes to model returns data, and GARCH models assess the optimal p and q number of lags to model variance, using the Akaike Information Criterion. Alternative GARCH versions are examined.Dynamic portfolio strategies are evaluated using Sharpe Ratio portfolio performance evaluation tools, with a focus on the 2007-8 global financial crisis period. Static portfolio strategies are assessed using ARMA return and GARCH variance forecasting. Results are used alongside established financial literature to assess the optimal portfolio strategy. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

International Relations: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the central ideas and tools of international relations, with theory, empirical evidence, examples, and diagrams to support the analysis.Examine gains from trade theory, using the concepts of absolute efficiency, relative efficiency, opportunity cost, comparative advantage, and the terms of trade to learn why countries get involved with international trade.Explore trade liberalization, as the role of power and interdependence in states' liberalization policies is assessed with realist and liberal theories of international relations, and the case studies of India and Mexico.Apply game theory to the problem of global warming and climate change, as the challenge to see the two biggest greenhouse gas polluters the United States and China reduce emissions is represented as an assurance game, prisoners' dilemma game, and chicken game, and the prospects for a resolution evaluated.Investigate the role which cultural difference plays in international relations, as communitarian, constructivist, and cosmopolitan theories are examined, and their predictions for cultural conflict, cultural change, or cultural unity are discussed. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Methods of Microeconomics: A Simple Introduction is an accessible guide to the mathematical methods of microeconomics. Worked examples are combined with exercises and solutions for readers, as economic relationships and equilibrium values are revealed and outcomes predicted.Consumer preferences and utility are examined with indifference curves, and differentiation to find marginal utility and the marginal rate of substitution. Consumer choice uses a Lagrange multiplier for optimization of utility functions subject to a budget constraint.Risk attitude and expected utility look at absolute and relative risk aversion measures, and apply risk averse, neutral or risk loving attitudes to find the expected utility linked with gambling or buying insurance.Production maximization optimizes production functions subject to cost constraints. Cost minimization optimizes cost functions subject to production constraints. Profit maximization with quadratic cost functions is performed for perfectly competitive or monopoly firms. Monopoly, monopolistically competitive, and oligopoly equilibrium values are calculated with optimization.The effects of asymmetric information are examined by comparing actual, equilibrium, and efficient outcomes for buyers and sellers. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Game Theory for Business: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the central ideas and methods of business game theory, with over 35 diagrams to support the analysis.Understand a business's role, goals and incentives. Examine adverse selection, moral hazard, and a bait and switch strategy, see how a firm may secure long-run gains, and learn what the show business industry can teach other businesses.Evaluate duopoly price competition, prospects for collusion, and industry entry deterrence using credible commitments and asymmetric information. Look at strategic behaviour with top dog, fat cat, puppy dog ploy, or lean and hungry strategies, Cournot output competition and Bertrand price competition.See what a business can learn from evolutionary biology, and how a firm may differentiate itself from its rivals. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Microeconomics: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the central principles and ideas of microeconomics, with over 50 diagrams included to illustrate the analysis.Understand opportunity cost, diminishing returns, demand and supply, the market equilibrium, market failure, adverse selection and moral hazard. Learn how to calculate price and income elasticities.Consumer theory explores budget constraints, indifference curves, marginal rate of substitution, utility maximization, Hicks and Slutsky income and substitution effects, and Samuelson's revealed preference theory.Firm theory examines production factors, Cobb-Douglas and other production functions, returns to scale, isoquant curves, isocost lines, cost minimization, profit maximization, Lerner index, and differentiation to derive a marginal revenue curve.Perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly are explained. Monopoly welfare effects are shown, with oligopoly models of kinked demand, cartels, dominant price leadership, Cournot and Bertrand.Game theory investigates duopoly and battle of the sexes games, assessing them with dominance and credible threats. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Mathematical Formulas for Economics and Business: A Simple Introduction includes over 100 formulas in the field, alongside relevant definitions and explanations. The formulas cover the areas of supply and demand, market equilibrium, non-linear functions, financial mathematics, differentiation, functions of several variables, integration, and matrix algebra. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Financial Risk Management: A Simple Introduction presents a detailed guide to some of the central ideas and tools of financial risk management, with theory, examples, formulas, and calculations to illustrate the analysis.Calculate leverage, duration, modified duration, and convexity to find the risk exposure and interest rate risk sensitivity of an asset. Understand bond immunization to manage risk, and assess non-vanilla bond risk using both effective duration and effective convexity.Use value at risk to forecast maximum losses over a period, with detailed step by step instructions provided to using the variance-covariance, historical simulation, and Monte Carlo methods. Learn how to perform autocorrelation and unit root tests to test the square root of time rule.Conduct time-varying volatility analysis, using detailed steps to create an exponentially weighted moving average and then backtest it for robustness.Apply financial risk management tools to the empirical 1994 bankruptcy of Orange County, California to determine if it could have been avoided, and assess a number of financial derivative hedge instruments. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Econometrics: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the principles and methods of econometrics, with data samples, regressions, equations and diagrams to illustrate the analysis.Examine a linear and multiple regression model, ordinary least squares method, and the Gauss-Markov conditions for a best linear unbiased estimator.Understand hypothesis testing, with a null hypothesis, t, F or chi-square test statistics and distributions, and interpret regression results. Dummy variables model qualitative data and Chow tests assess regression equivalence.Explore heteroscedasticity with the White method and with generalized least squares, Goldfeld-Quandt, Breusch-Pagan, and White tests. Assess autocorrelation with Durbin-Watson, Durbin h, and Breusch-Godfrey tests, lagged variables and auxiliary regressions.Assess the impact of omitted variables, incorrect variables or functional form, and a non-normal distribution with Ramsey RESET and Jarque-Bera tests. Model random variables with the Method of Moments' estimators, instrumental variables and Hausman test. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Economics: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible guide to the principles and methods of economics, with calculations and over 25 diagrams to support the analysis.Understand the four dimensional nature of economics, and how its learning process differs from other subjects.Use data points, read graphs, and learn to create your own graphs and how to plot a trend curve. Evaluate the laws of diminishing marginal utility and diminishing returns exhibited by these trend curves, and assess the impact on consumers and producers. Turn curves into lines to find the relationship between two variables using an intercept and slope.Find the equilibrium outcome where all sides are balanced and understand its importance for consumers and producers. Examine the factors which facilitate or prevent an equilibrium outcome, and which may lead to a range of possible outcomes.Explore the impact of time as static analysis becomes dynamic analysis. Look into short-run shifts in demand or supply, and the affect which they may have on prices and consumption or production levels. Look at changes which can occur over the long-run, specifically the end of the law of diminishing returns.Microeconomics overview explains how consumer preferences and budget constraint decide demand, and firm productivity and costs against revenue decide supply. Macroeconomics overview explains how the IS-LM model where goods and money markets balance decides aggregate demand, and the Phillips curve and growth models determine aggregate supply.Econometrics is introduced as a method is presented to create value estimates, and economic theory becomes practice. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Accounting and Finance Formulas: A Simple Introduction includes over 75 formulas in the field of accounting and finance, alongside relevant definitions and explanations. The formulas cover the fields of financial accounting, management accounting and financial management. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.

Game Theory: A Simple Introduction offers an accessible and enjoyable guide to the basic principles and extensive applications of game theory.Understand a game matrix, the prisoners' dilemma, dominant and mixed strategies, zero-sum games, Pareto efficiency, the Nash equilibrium, and the power of asymmetric information.Calculate payoffs and outcomes in games involving characters such as Jack and Jill, or friend and stranger. Look at the effects of altruism and hatred on games, and see how games can change over time.Explore examples looking at gang members, free riders, global governance, a long-term relationship, competing corporations, advertisers and their customers, along with familiar hawk-dove and chicken games.See game players use every trick in the book to get what they want, with over 50 images to guide through the steps they use to play the game. Learn about a range of economic, business, financial, social and political fields with these short and detailed introductions.