The classic introduction to economic thought, now updated in time for the publication of New Ideas from Dead CEOs
This entertaining and accessible introduction to the great economic thinkers throughout history— Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and more—shows how their ideas still apply to our modern world. In this revised edition, renowned economist Todd Buchholz offers an insightful and informed perspective on key economic issues in the new millennium: increasing demand for energy, the rise of China, international trade, aging populations, health care, and the effects of global warming. New Ideas from Dead Economists is a fascinating guide to understanding both the evolution of economic theory and our complex contemporary economy.

Recommended Reading by Warren Buffet in his March 2013 Letter to Shareholders How speculation has come to dominate investment--a hard-hitting look from the creator of the first index fund. Over the course of his sixty-year career in the mutual fund industry, Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle has witnessed a massive shift in the culture of the financial sector. The prudent, value-adding culture of long-term investment has been crowded out by an aggressive, value-destroying culture of short-term speculation. Mr. Bogle has not been merely an eye-witness to these changes, but one of the financial sector's most active participants. In The Clash of the Cultures, he urges a return to the common sense principles of long-term investing. Provocative and refreshingly candid, this book discusses Mr. Bogle's views on the changing culture in the mutual fund industry, how speculation has invaded our national retirement system, the failure of our institutional money managers to effectively participate in corporate governance, and the need for a federal standard of fiduciary duty. Mr. Bogle recounts the history of the index mutual fund, how he created it, and how exchange-traded index funds have altered its original concept of long-term investing. He also presents a first-hand history of Wellington Fund, a real-world case study on the success of investment and the failure of speculation. The book concludes with ten simple rules that will help investors meet their financial goals. Here, he presents a common sense strategy that "may not be the best strategy ever devised. But the number of strategies that are worse is infinite." The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation completes the trilogy of best-selling books, beginning with Bogle on Investing: The First 50 Years (2001) and Don't Count on It! (2011)

Stocks and bonds? Real estate? Hedge funds? Private equity? If you think those are the things to focus on in building an investment portfolio, Andrew Ang has accumulated a body of research that will prove otherwise.
In his new book Asset Management: A Systematic Approach to Factor Investing, Ang upends the conventional wisdom about asset allocation by showing that what matters aren't asset class labels but the bundles of overlapping risks they represent. Making investments is like eating a healthy diet, Ang says: you've got to look through the foods you eat to focus on the nutrients they contain. Failing to do so can lead to a serious case of malnutrition-for investors as well as diners.
The key, in Ang's view, is bad times, and the fact that every investor's bad times are somewhat different. The notion that bad times are paramount is the guiding principle of the book, which offers a new approach to the age-old problem of where do you put your money? Years of experience, both as a finance professor and as a consultant, have led Ang to see that the traditional approach, with its focus on asset classes, is too crude and ultimately too costly to serve investors adequately. He focuses instead on "factor risks," the peculiar sets of hard times that cut across asset classes, and that must be the focus of our attention if we are to weather market turmoil and receive the rewards that come with doing so. Optimally harvesting factor premiums-on our own or by hiring others-requires identifying your particular set of hard times, and exploiting the difference between them and those of the average investor.
Clearly written yet chock-full of the latest research and data, Asset Management will be indispensable reading for trustees, professional money managers, smart private investors, and business students who want to understand the economics behind factor risk premiums, harvest them efficiently in their portfolios, and embark on the search for true alpha.

In Asset Pricing and Portfolio Choice Theory, Kerry E. Back at last offers what is at once a welcoming introduction to and a comprehensive overview of asset pricing. Useful as a textbook for graduate students in finance, with extensive exercises and a solutions manual available for professors, the book will also serve as an essential reference for scholars and professionals, as it includes detailed proofs and calculations as section appendices.
Topics covered include the classical results on single-period, discrete-time, and continuous-time models, as well as various proposed explanations for the equity premium and risk-free rate puzzles and chapters on heterogeneous beliefs, asymmetric information, non-expected utility preferences, and production models. The book includes numerous exercises designed to provide practice with the concepts and to introduce additional results. Each chapter concludes with a notes and references section that supplies pathways to additional developments in the field.

Matlab is used within nearly all investment banks and is a requirement in most quant job ads. There is no other book written for finance practitioners that covers this Enables readers to implement financial and econometric models in Matlab All central concepts and theories are illustrated by Matlab implementations which are accompanied by detailed descriptions of the programming steps needed All concepts and techniques are introduced from a basic level Chapter 1 introduces Matlab and matrix algebra, it serves to make the reader familiar with the use and basic capabilities if Matlab. The chapter concludes with a walkthrough of a linear regression model, showing how Matlab can be used to solve an example problem analytically and by the use of optimization and simulation techniques Chapter 2 introduces expected return and risk as central concepts in finance theory using fixed income instruments as examples, the chapter illustrates how risk measures such as standard deviation, Modified duration, VaR, and expected shortfall can be calculated empirically and in closed form Chapter 3 introduces the concept of diversification and illustrates how the efficient investment frontier can be derived - a Matlab is developed that can be used to calculate a given number of portfolios that lie on an efficient frontier, the chapter also introduces the CAPM Chapter 4 introduces econometric tools: principle component analysis is presented and used as a prelude to yield-curve factor models. The Nelson-Siegel model is used to introduce the Kalman-Filter as a way to add time-series dynamics to the evolution of yield curves over time, time series models such as Vector Autoregression and regime-switching are also presented Supported by a website with online resources - www.kennyholm.com where all Matlab programs referred to in the text can be downloaded. The site also contains lecture slides and answers to end of chapter exercises

The jury is still out on what the future of Goldman Sachs will look like, but no one can argue that the 139 year old firm has been (and, if Warren Buffett has his way, will be) the dominant investment banker and dealer on Wall Street. What does Buffett see that we on the outside do not? Its all about the people.
Charles D. Ellis has written a landmark book that couldnt come at a better time. The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs is the colorful and fascinating story of Goldmans rise to power through many life-threatening changes in markets, competition, and regulation. It tells the personal history of the men and women who built the worlds leading financial powerhouse from a firm that was disgraced and nearly destroyed in 1929, limped along as a break-even operation through the Depression and WWII, and, with only one special service and one improbable banker, began the rise that, in half a century, took Goldman Sachs to global leadership.
A conversation with Charles Ellis:
* Is Goldman Sachs really a lot better than other firms at managing risk?
The big difference is in the cumulative power of many small details. The difference in the speed, accuracy, and extent of communication inside the firm; the difference in intensity, focus, and disciplined toughness of the men and women hand selected to work there and real difference in recruiting, training, and compensation. All add up to a decisive advantage in management. Leaders and co-leaders manage Goldmans many business units with rigor and drive; risk management is the envy of other banks; and coordination is powerful across business units and markets around the world.
As every Olympic athlete knows, such small differences make all the difference between gold, silver or bronze or no medal at all. In the current, very difficult test, Goldman Sachs has come in 1st again.
* Goldman Sachs is often described as the best managed Wall Street firm. Is that true?
Yes, it is true. Goldman Sachs is the best managed Wall Street firm and the best led. Management is why Goldman Sachs is consistently rated the best firm to work for and gets top ratings from clients all over the world. Superior management is why the firm earns more profit, develops more effective people, has made itself the market leader in the U.S., U.K, Germany, France, China, Japan, and in most major lines of banking business. No other firm comes close.
One of the things you will learn in The Partnership is just how Goldman succeeded in making themselves different from any other Wall Street firm. They learned early on that in order to survive, they had to not only make money, but create a culture that was universal, that demanded absolutely loyalty and, most importantly, act as one organism.
* Why does Goldman Sachs put so much weight on its culture?
Goldman Sachs culture works. In the complex, fast-changing, global, 24/7 securities business almost all the important decisions are made in highly specific and complex settings under great time pressure. These decisions cannot be made by headquarters and they cannot be deferred. They must be made locally by local market and business experts thousands of times every day.
Rules wont work. If rules were written for every type of decision in all those different businesses in all the worlds different markets in all the different cultures, the resulting Rule Book would be far too large and complex to read or use.
Culture its way of working is the universal stem cell that enables Goldman Sachs to operate so forcefully in so many different national markets and in so many different businesses.
* With all its different business activities all over the world, doesnt Goldman Sachs have problems with conflicts of interest?
Yes! The firm certainly has many, many conflicts of interest. While it could take a defensive approach and try to avoid or minimize those risks of conflicts, the firm believes the more realistic and effective approach is to recognize those risks, be candid about them with clients and counterparties, and actively manage the conflicts. The firm strives to deal with each of them in such thoughtful and effective ways that clients and customers will know Goldman Sachs can be trusted to manage conflicts better than any other firm.
This is, of course, an assumption of enormous responsibility particularly on the scale on which Goldman Sachs operates so it raises the obvious next question: Who will watch the watcher?
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One of the most important recent developments in financial markets is the institutionalization of saving associated with the growth of pension funds, life insurance companies, and mutual funds. An increasing proportion of household saving is now managed by professional portfolio managers instead of being directly invested in the securities markets or held in the form of bank deposits. With the aging of the population and its adverse impact on public pension systems, the shift of individual savings to institutional investors is likely to become even more marked in the coming years.This book provides a comprehensive economic assessment of institutional investment. It charts the development and performance of the asset management industry and analyzes the implications of rising institutionalized saving for the development of the securities trading industry, the financial sector as a whole, and the wider economy. The book draws extensively on international experience, particularly in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

This 1994 book presents a detailed description and history of one of the most famous companies of the early fourteenth century. This analysis of the Peruzzi Company produces a radical reassessment of what made the Florentine 'super-companies' so exceptional: commodity trading, especially in grain, which required heavy capital, sophisticated organisation, and an international network. But the book also exposes the limitations of their financial power, and explodes the myth that the collapse of the Peruzzi and its joint-venture partner, the Bardi, was caused by bad loans to Edward III made to finance his invasions of France.