Books in the Financial Management Association Survey and Synthesis Series series

Real options analysis is 30 years old, but there is still little guidance on how actually to implement it in practice. This book develops the building blocks of real options analysis and shows readers how to apply them to a wide variety of problems in business and economics.

Stocks and bonds? Real estate? Hedge funds? Private equity? The conventional way of allocating across asset classes fails to account for the overlapping risks they represent. Investors must consider the underlying factor risks behind asset class labels, just as eating a healthy diet requires looking through foods to the nutrients they contain. Factor risks are the hard times that affect all assets, and investors are rewarded for weathering losses during bad timeswith long-run risk premiums.

A closely held firm is not a smaller version of a large public firm, anymore than a child is a miniature adult. Recognizing that value comes from the ability to generate future cash flows, this book emphasizes the differences between the large and small firms when presenting the concepts to value the closely held firm.

The Financial Crisis of Our Time investigates the mechanism by which the housing industry came into crisis beginning in 2006, and the system of incentives that led to financial disaster.

In Too Much Is Not Enough, Robert W. Kolb studies the performance of incentives in executive compensation across many dimensions of CEO performance.

This book examines the economic, psychological, sociological, historical, and legal traditions behind the demand, supply, institutions, and regulation of consumer credit in today's marketplace and how and why they have evolved.

This book examines the economic, psychological, sociological, historical, and legal traditions behind the demand for financial disclosures like Truth in Lending as consumer protections, how they have evolved into what they have become today, and how they might be reformed and improved.

Efficient Asset Management, now in its second edition, presents a highly intuitive yet rigorous approach to defining optimal portfolios. Through practical examples and illustrations, the authors, whose firm has been chosen to cosponsor the new Harry M. Markowitz Award, update the practice of optimization for modern investment management.

The stereotype of the "angel investor" is a retired wealthy entrepreneur who sees potential, asks tough questions, takes a large stake, and in a few years makes a massive return in an IPO. This outsider fills the gap between the venture capitalist and the professional investor, swooping in with cash and expertise to bring dreams to fruition. Unfortunately, Shane observes, this figure bears no relationship to reality. In Fool's Gold, he draws on hard data from the Federal Reserve and other sources to paint the first reliable group portrait of the lionized angel investors. Surprisingly, he finds that they are fewer, contribute less, and involve themselves in fewer start-ups than the conventional wisdom suggests. Most angels typically still have their day jobs, make investments of $10,000 or less, and take little or no rolein assisting entrepreneurs build their companies. Few of the companies they put money into arrive at IPOs, let alone massive returns. But angels can play a critical role, he writes, if the fantasy is abandoned by all concerned. Drawing on his rich store of data, Shane offers recommendations to entrepreneursand angels alike for the most productive use of angel investing, and suggests how policymakers can encourage it. Particularly promising are angel groups, which pool knowledge and money for wiser and more productive investments. In groups, angels can rely on each other's expertise, share the labor of performing due diligence, and generally insure that their money is being placed-and used-wisely. Fostering the formation of such groups may be the single most important thing that government cando to boost angel investing. Massively researched and briskly written, Fools' Gold offers the first real resource on this misunderstood aspect of our entrepreneurial system.

Valuation of mortgage-backed securities requires blending empirical analysis of borrower behavior and mathematical modeling of interest rates and home prices, with recognition of various prices of risk and uncertainty. This book offers a detailed description of the sophisticated theories and advanced methods used for the real-world valuation of MBS.

The Search for Value: Measuring the Company's Cost of Capital draws together a large body of financial research related to the cost of capital. This synthesis describes the results and explains the implications of the research. It provides a comprehensive framework for practitioners by detailing the various methods for accurately evaluating investment in projects, divisions or entire companies.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of behavioral finance for a practitioner audience. With the use of the latest psychological research, Shefrin helps us to understand the human behaviour that guides stock selection, financial services, and corporate financial strategy.

This book covers the classical results on single-period, discrete-time, and continuous-time models of portfolio choice and asset pricing. It also treats asymmetric information, production models, various proposed explanations for the equity premium puzzle, and topics important for behavioral finance.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have grown substantially in size, diversity, and market significance in recent years, generating considerable interest from investors, academics, regulators and the press. Ananth Madhavan examines in-depth the drivers for the rise of ETFs against the background of interest in passive index investing.