Brand new Elsevier titles will soon be added to Cyberlibris academic collection. Finance mavericks, like Professor Anjan Thakor, Professor Stuart I. Greenbaum, Professor Francesco Saita, Professor B. Espen Eckbo and Operations Risk specialist David Loader are about to join the fine list of finance scholars whose work is available online in Cyberlibris Academia.
CONTEMPORARY FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION, Stuart I. Greenbaum and Anjan V. Thakor, 2007
Here is how Professor Greenbaum and Professor Thakor "pitch" their book:
"In writing this book we set out to modernize the teaching of bank management at universities and collegiate schools of business. Our goal is to expand the scope of the typical bank management course by
(1) covering a broader, but still selective, variety of financial institutions, and
(2) explaining the why of intermediation, as opposed to simply describing institutions, regulations, and market phenomena.
Our approach is unapologetically analytical, and we have tried to make analysis an appealing feature of this book. We will consider the book a success if it leads students to not only discover the endless subtlety and plasticity of financial institutions and credit
market practices, but also develop an appreciation for why these institutions, market
practices, and governmental regulations are encountered. The unifying theme is that
informational considerations are at the heart of what most banks do.
The novelty of our approach lies in both the analytical orientation and our choice and sequencing of topics. We begin with the questions of why financial intermediaries exist and what they do. We believe that understanding the why of financial intermediation will prepare the readers for the inescapable volatility of the future. Regulations, institutions, and claims will change, but the functional foundations on which financial intermediaries are built will remain basically the same."
A sample chapter is here.
This textbook should indeed be on any shelf dealing with banking and financial intermediation.
HANDBOOK OF CORPORATE FINANCE, B.Espen Eckbo, 2007
This book, spearheaded by Professor B. Espen Eckbo, gathers the "fine fleur" of scholars in the domain of corporate finance, to name a few Jerold B. Warner, Richard Ruback, Sudipto Dasgupta etc... Since Modigliani and Miller's seminal paper, the field of corporate finance has been the subject of intense scrutiny. This timely book covers a wide range of topics taking a close look at the main empirical findings to date.
In Professor Eckbo's own words:
"Judging by the sheer number of papers reviewed in this Handbook, the empirical analysis of firms’ financing and investment decisions—empirical corporate finance—has become a dominant field in financial economics. The growing interest in everything “corporate” is fueled by a healthy combination of fundamental theoretical developments and recent widespread access to large transactional data bases.
A less scientific—but nevertheless important—source of inspiration is a growing awareness of the important social implications of corporate behavior and governance. This Handbook takes stock of the main empirical findings to date across an unprecedented spectrum of corporate finance issues, ranging from econometric methodology, to raising capital and capital structure choice, and to managerial incentives and corporate investment behavior.
The surveys are written by leading empirical researchers that remain active in their respective areas of interest. With few exceptions, the writing style makes the chapters
accessible to industry practitioners. For doctoral students and seasoned academics, the surveys offer dense roadmaps into the empirical research landscape and provide suggestions for future work."
More on this book here.
VALUE AT RISK AND BANK CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, Francesco Saita, 2007
While the highly technical measurement techniques and methodologies of
Value at Risk have attracted huge interest, much less attention has
been focused on how Value at Risk and the risk-adjusted performance
measures such as RAROC or economic profit/EVA can be effectively used
to improve a bank's decision making processes.
Academic books are
typically concerned primarily with measurement techniques, and devote
only a small section to describing the applications, usually without
discussing the problems that changing organizational processes in banks
may have on business units' behaviour.
Practitioners' books are often
based on a single experience, presenting the approach that has been
pursued by a single bank, but often do not adequately evaluate that
approach. In actual practice, the choice of how to use Value at Risk
and risk-adjusted performance measures has no single optimal solution,
but requires effective decision making that can identify the solution
that is consistent with the bank's style of management and
coordination mechanisms, and often with characteristics of individual
business units as well.
In this book, Francesco Saita of Bocconi
University argues that even though risk measurement techniques have
greatly improved in recent years for market, credit and now also
operational risk, capital management and capital allocation decisions
are far from becoming purely technical and mechanical. On one hand,
decisions about capital management must consider handling different
capital constraints (e.g. regulatory vs. economic capital ) and face
remarkable difficulties in providing a measure of "aggregated" Value
at Risk (i.e. a measure that considers the overall value at risk of the
bank after diversification across risk types). On the other hand, the
aim of using capital more efficiently through capital allocation cannot
be achieved only through a sort of centralized asset allocation
process, but rather by designing a Value at Risk limit system and a
risk-adjusted performance measurement system that are designed to
provide the right incentives to individual business units.
This
connection between sophisticated and cutting edge risk measurement
techniques and practical bank decision making about capital management
and capital allocation make this book unique and provide readers with a
depth of academic and theoretical expertise combined with practical and
real-world understanding of bank structure, organizational constraints,
and decision-making processes.
More on the book here.
OPERATIONS RISK, David Loader, 2006
Operations Risk--a form of Operational Risk, is becoming increasingly
important as more and more sophisticated products and the use of those
products occurs in the financial services industry. Outsourcing,
including overseas outsourcing, is changing the structure of firms and
particularly operations teams.
Thus understanding the existing and the
changing risk environment in operations functions and its impact on
operational risk is centrally important today. The book focuses on
areas such as technology risk, people risk, and settlement risk,
examining the dangers that lurk within different organisations.
Case
studies throughout the book illustrate the way in which risk can become
magnified and ultimately become a serious danger to the businesses
concerned. The reader is challenged throughout the book to interpret
given situations in Operations Risk so as to understand the impact of
the risks and devise solutions through a series of exercises included
in the relevant chapters. (answers are provided).
This “self-test”
approach will help reinforce understanding of the detailed material
contained throughout the book.
A sample chapter here.
Cyberlibris proudly announces the forthcoming launch of the first digital library entirely dedicated to finance. Whatever your interests are, corporate finance, financial econometrics, options, swaps, stochastic calculus, CAPM, stochastic discount factor, behavioral finance..., this library will provide you with the most relevant material published by leading houses such as Princeton University Press, John Wiley & Sons, Now Publishers, Blackwell Publishing, Elsevier etc...
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This book is aimed at all readers interested in understanding the
empirical basis for the equity risk premium. Through the analysis and
interpretation of two scholars whose research contributions have been
key factors in the modern debate over stock market perfomance, this
volume engages the reader in many of the key issues of importance to
investors. How large is the premium? Is history a reliable guide to
predict future equity returns? Does the equity and cash flows of the
market? Are global equity markets different from those in the United
States? Do emerging markets offer higher or lower equity risk premia?
The authors use the historical performance of the world's stock markets
to address these issues.
La Revue du FINANCIER
The World of Hedge Funds
is a compendium of distinguished papers focusing on the cutting-edge
analysis of hedge funds. This area is arguably the fastest growing
source of funds in the investment management arena. It is often said (and sold) to be an
exciting opportunity for the investor and manager in terms of the range
of return and risk available. However, some critics have voiced concern about the opacity and lack of regulation of hedge funds. 
Global Corporate Finance, by SUK KIM (University of Detroit-Mercy) and SEUNG H KIM (St Louis University), Blackwell Publishing, 2006
"Having a financial adviser enables the investor to carry a psychological call option. If the investment decision turns out well, the investor takes the credit, and if it turns out badly, the regret can be lowered by blaming the adviser."
COMPUTATIONAL FINANCE, George Levy, Butterworth Heinemann