Comovements among asset prices have received a lot of attention for several reasons. For example, comovements are important in cross-hedging and cross-speculation; they determine capital allocation both domestically and in international mean-variance portfolios and also, they are useful in...

Several empirical studies have shown the inadequacy of the standard Brownian motion (sBm) as a model of asset returns. To correct for this evidence some authors have conjectured that asset returns may be independently and identically Pareto-Lévy stable (PLs) distributed, whereas others have...

Counterfeiting is a well known world-wide phenomenon afflicting several real economies. Notwithstanding the importance of this topic, there are not many works about it in the literatute; moreover, these contributions mainly deal with counterfeiting employing a model developed in a static time...

The purpose of this paper is to develop certain relatively recent mathematical discoveries known generally as stochastic calculus, or more specifically as Ito's Calculus and to also illustrate their application in the pricing of options. The mathematical methods of stochastic calculus are...

Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods Global International System in 1971, the world economy has experienced significant currency volatility. The major economies of the world have addressed such volatility differently. The EU has chosen to follow a monetary union and introduced successfully a...

The celebrated Taylor Rule methodology has established that the decisions made by the Federal Open Market Committee concerning possible changes in short term interest rates reflected in Fed Funds are influenced by deviations from a desired level of inflation and from potential output. The Taylor...

Several methods have been developed for filtering seasonal structures and extreme returns in financial and economic series. The theoretical support for this approach is rather questionable since it focuses on the effects of shocks on prices and not on their sources. The non-proportional...

This chapter introduces the reader to the Black-Scholes -Merton model by identifying its assumptions and illustrating its mathematical derivation using intuitive financial reasoning. Numerical examples are also presented to help the reader understand practical aspects of this celebrated model....