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Elsevier

Books in Social sciences and humanities

  • Wealth Management

    Private Banking, Investment Decisions, and Structured Financial Products
    • 1st Edition
    • Dimitris N. Chorafas
    • English
    Wealth Management has two themes: Private Banking and investment decisions regarding Structural Financial Products. Dr. Dimitris Chorafas examines in a rigorous way whether structured financial products are advisable investments for retail and institutional investors and, if yes, which risks they entail. As our society becomes increasingly affluent, and state-supported pension schemes find it difficult to survive, a growing number of high net-worth individuals, and families, have become retail investors – looking for ways and means to optimize wealth management, and Private Banking deals with these sorts of clients. Private banking also deals with clients that are institutional investors, such as pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance companies, as well as not-for-profits, foundations and companies explicitly set up for wealth management. Both institutional and retail investors are being offered by the banks they work with structured products. Typically, these are securities that provide them with a redemption amount, with may be either with full or partial capital protection, and some type of return. The book examines structured financial products, their polyvalent nature, and the results which could be expected from them. Return on structural instruments, which are essentially derivatives, is paid in function of a specific investment strategy on selected underlying asset(s). This essentially means on the performance of the underlyings, obtained by asset managers, which may be banks or hedge funds, through purchase or sale of embedded options. But there are risks. Both risk and return from structured products are related to three main issues: the volatility of future value of an underlying, the uncertainty of future events, and the exposure of the product. Every type of investment is subject to market forces, and the more leveraged a portfolio is, the greater will probably be both the assumed risk and the expected reward. The fact that structured financial products appeal, or at least are being marketed, to both retail investors and institutional investors makes the dual approach deliberately chosen in this book most advisable. This book addresses all these issues in a practical manner with numerous case studies and real-world examples drawn from the author’s intensive research.

  • Cotton Trading Manual

    • 1st Edition
    • Terry Townsend
    • English
    Cotton Trading Manual (CTM) is the first work to provide a comprehensive reference source to the conduct of the complex international cotton market. CTM begins by looking at the history of the cotton trade, and then moves on to assess the current global picture, including a discussion of trends in the market, as well as production and consumption analysis. The third and fourth parts focus on trading in physical cotton and futures respectively. Finally, the last section deals with administrative and management issues within the cotton trade as a whole, such as contracts, insurance and risk management. CTM is an indispensable practical companion for all those involved with trading in this commodity.

  • Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science

    • 1st Edition
    • Henri Cohen + 1 more
    • English
    Categorization, the basic cognitive process of arranging objects into categories, is a fundamental process in human and machine intelligence and is central to investigations and research in cognitive science. Until now, categorization has been approached from singular disciplinary perspectives with little overlap or communication between the disciplines involved (Linguistics, Psychology, Philosophy, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Cognitive Anthropology). Henri Cohen and Claire Lefebvre have gathered together a stellar collection of contributors in this unique, ambitious attempt to bring together converging disciplinary and conceptual perspectives on this topic."Categorizatio... is a key concept across the range of cognitive sciences, including linguistics and philosophy, yet hitherto it has been hard to find accounts that go beyond the concerns of one or two individual disciplines. The Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science provides just the sort of interdisciplinary approach that is necessary to synthesize knowledge from the different fields and provide the basis for future innovation." Professor Bernard Comrie, Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany"Anyone concerned with language, semantics, or categorization will want to have this encyclopedic collection."Professo... Eleanor Rosch, Dept of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, USA

  • Serial Crime

    Theoretical and Practical Issues in Behavioral Profiling
    • 1st Edition
    • Wayne Petherick
    • English
    Serial Crime provides a theoretical and practical foundation for understanding the motivation and dynamics in a range of serial offenses . It successfully connects concepts and creates links to criminal behavior across crimes —murder, sexual assault, and arson— something no other book available does. The connection of serial behavior to profiling, the most useful tool in discovering behavior patterns, is new to the body of literature available and serves to examine the ideal manner in which profiling can be used in conjunction with psychology to positively affect criminal investigations. The book includes case examples that offer real-world uses of behavioral profiling in investigations, and highlight a variety of issues in understanding and investigating serial crime. The book's primary audience would include criminal profilers, fire investigators, universities offering forensic science/criminal justice programs, and forensic, police, criminal, and behavioral psychologists. The secondary audience would include attorneys and judges involved in criminal litigation, and forensic scientists and consultants (generalists).

  • How to Cheat at IT Project Management

    • 1st Edition
    • Susan Snedaker
    • English
    This book is written with the IT professional in mind. It provides a clear, concise system for managing IT projects, regardless of the size or complexity of the project. It avoids the jargon and complexity of traditional project management (PM) books. Instead, it provides a unique approach to IT project management, combining strategic business concepts (project ROI, strategic alignment, etc.) with the very practical, step-by-step instructions for developing and managing a successful IT project. It’s short enough to be easily read and used but long enough to be comprehensive in the right places.

  • Thought Suppression

    • 1st Edition
    • Eric Rassin
    • English
    Is it possible to ban unwanted thoughts from consciousness? According to the literature on thought suppression, the answer is no. In the 1980s, Wegner and colleges demonstrated that the average person cannot prevent a trivial thought like that of a polar bear from entering consciousness approximately seven times in a five minute period. This experimental finding was followed by a substantial number of replications. This book provides an up-to-date overview of the thought suppression literature. First, similarities and differences between suppression, repression, and dissociation are discussed. Methodological issues are then considered. Finally, the clinical applications of the thought suppression literature are discussed. Although there are numerous conditions to which the phenomenon of suppression can be applied, obsession and traumatic recollection are the main applications. In addition to offering an overview of the literature, this book links the thought suppression paradigm to other research fields, such as directed forgetting and repressive coping. Furthermore, it discusses the phenomenon of thought suppression in the light of broader theories such as the cognitive theory of obsession, and the ego depletion hypothesis. Clinical implications and directions for future research are offered.

  • Measuring the Marginal Social Cost of Transport

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 14
    • Christopher Nash + 1 more
    • English
    Many transport economists have for some time proposed marginal social cost as the principle on which prices in the transport sector should be based and, in recent years, their prescription has come to be taken more and more seriously by policy-makers. However, in order to properly test the possible implications of implementing pricing based on marginal social cost and, ultimately, to introduce such a system, it is necessary to actually measure the marginal social costs concerned, and how they vary according to mode, time and context. This book reviews the transport pricing policy debate and reports on the significant advances made in measuring the marginal social costs of transport, particularly through UNITE and other European research projects. We look in turn at infrastructure, operating costs, user costs (both of congestion and of charges in frequency of scheduled transport services) accidents and environmental costs, and how these estimates have been used to examine the impact of marginal cost pricing in transport. We finish by examining how the results of case studies might be generalised to obtain estimates of marginal social costs for all circumstances and, finally, presenting our conclusions.

  • Marketing Due Diligence

    Reconnecting Strategy to Share Price
    • 1st Edition
    • Malcolm McDonald + 2 more
    • English
    At the top of a company, sales do not matter, profits do not matter, even return on investment is a secondary concern. What matters is share price and what drives share price is the creation of shareholder value. Many marketing directors, obsessed with branding and other promotional tactics, miss this fundamental truth of modern business and so destroy the wealth of their company's ultimate owners. By failing to consider and manage the business risk associated with their strategies, they deliver returns below the cost of capital and neglect the firm's raison d'etre. The board needs a way of holding these marketers to account. Marketing Due Diligence is a new process which has emerged from years of research at Cranfield, one of Europe's leading business schools. It blends proven ideas from strategic and financial management with new concepts about organisational effectiveness to create a process that directly connects marketing strategy to shareholder value. CEOs and CFOs cannot afford to operate without Marketing Due Diligence. Bad marketing directors cannot afford to work with it.

  • Cash Flow Forecasting

    • 1st Edition
    • Andrew Fight
    • English
    Budgets are like road maps -- they provide a direction for a corporates financial management. Balance sheets and statements of revenues also provide insights into how well a company is following that direction. But cash flow and cash flow forecasts are what guide the day-to-day itinerary for an organization. Budgets and cash flow are dynamic -- adjustments and changes can and should occur. If you understand what you are looking at, you can use cash flow to create better budgets and thus more accurate cash flow forecasting.Cash Flow Forecasting outlines the techniques required to undertake a detailed analysis of the cash flow dynamics of the business from both a historical and forward looking perspective. Cash Flow Forecasting explains how to: * Determine appropriate cash flow figures from pro forma financial statements * Interpret detailed cash flow forecasts and understand the difference between profit and cash flow * Conserve or generate cash in the short term * Evaluate different methods of project evaluation * Recognize the limitations of accounting information in valuing companies

  • The Sarbanes-Oxley Act

    Overview and Implementation Procedures
    • 1st Edition
    • Michael F. Holt
    • English
    The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a mandatory requirement for all corporations listed in the US. Compliance is not an option. This book is written as a “working manual” for the senior management to grasp the Act and its implications. It provides a section by section overview of the Act and the appropriate action to take in each case. There is coverage of how UK companies listed in, or doing business with America also have to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A description of the UK version of SOX is also included. The Appendix describes the (minor) variations for Canadian listed corporations based on Ontario Securities Commission and British Columbia Securities Commission rules.

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