The accounts of medical trials provide very detailed information about the patients’ health conditions. On the contrary, almost no vital data such as marital status or age distribution are usually given. Yet, some of these factors can have a notable impact on the overall death rate, thereby...

We describe and document three mechanisms by which corporations can influence or even control stock prices. (i) Parent and holding companies wield control over other publicly traded companies. (ii) Through clever management of treasury stock based on buyback programs and stock issuance, stock...

It is usually assumed that stock prices reflect a balance between large numbers of small individual sellers and buyers. However, over the past fifty years mutual funds and other institutional shareholders have assumed an ever increasing part of stock transactions: their assets, as a percentage...

Transportation costs still play an important role in the economics of commodity markets. In this paper I present a theoretical framework aimed at describing spatial arbitrage under uncertainty; I analyze the effect of changing transport costs on different, yet related, variables: volume of...

The purpose of the book is to investigate the foundations of international and interregional trade at the microeconomic level of spatially separated commodity markets. At this level, price arbitrage and local disparities in production and demand functions are the main determinants. The model,...

Besides analyzing stock markets, the book considers a wide range of speculative markets for various items such as real estate, commodities , postage-stamps, antiquarian books. In particular, it highlights the following regularities:(i) During a speculative episode, the price of expensive items...

This volume explores the changes in speculative trading in the United States to provide an understanding of the present economic crisis. Readers will find a unified mathematical theory of speculation and new chapters that discuss neoliberalism