A Technical Guide to Mathematical Finance covers those foundational mathematical topics most important to an aspiring or professional quant. The text goes beyond a simple recitation of methods and aims to impart a genuine understanding of the fundamental concepts underpinning most of the techniques and tools routinely used by those working in quantitative finance.

Features

• Suitable for professional quants and graduate students in finance, and mathematical/quantitative finance
• "Concept Refreshers" used throughout to provide pithy summaries of complex topics
• Step-by-step detail for formal proofs and mathematical descriptions

The world is at a critical juncture where our industrial and economic principles have to be reshaped. Three major transitions are underway: towards the use of alternative energy sources, towards carbon-neutral and sustainable production, and towards digitalised manufacture and distribution. This book explores the ways in which these transitions are taking place in Europe.

No single institution can bring about the necessary changes: a productive cooperation between government, industry and (technological) knowledge centres has to be established. In this insightful book, Fred Bakker paints a vivid picture of a wide range of European businesses, industries and research institutes, joining forces to further the transitions. This process of 'Sharing Brainpower' proves to be a unique European strength that needs to be recognised and furthered.

Structured in five parts, the book provides a thumbnail sketch of Europe's goals and methods, through a bird's eye view across current initiatives towards the three transitions, to a concluding part in which the workings of Sharing Brainpower are described in terms of a set of 'lessons learned'. It shows how top-down initiatives and the bottom-up approach reinforce one another, with case stories that prove that diversity does not have to mean fragmentation; it is a source of strength.

Policymakers, industry advisers, board members, chief innovation officers and students will find much to inspire them and their work in this book.

A website with cases, updates and more information is available at sharingbrainpower.eu.

There is widespread rhetorical agreement that the fashion industry must get itself onto a more ethical and sustainable footing. What does this mean in practice, and how can this be achieved in different regions around the world?

This book brings together expert scholars and reflective practitioners via a network of dialogue and exchange to help drive forward an ethical and sustainable future for the fashion industry. With insights from fashion design, management, sociology, philosophy, education, heritage studies and policy, the book asks whether or not fashion can save the world.

Enriched with illuminating case interviews and the perspective of experts, this book will be of interest to researchers and scholars in the fields of sustainable business and the fashion industry, and provides a unique resource for readers seeking to understand more about the need for responsible fashion.

This book provides a first-of-its-kind analysis of the emerging global hydrogen economy from the vantage point of one of the world's biggest energy providers: Saudi Arabia. In 2021, and within the context of the Circular Carbon Economy framework, Saudi Arabia announced its goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2060 and produce a substantial amount of clean hydrogen annually by 2030. The Kingdom is optimally situated geographically between the major demand markets in Europe and North Asia, from where it can leverage clean hydrogen exports as a potential tool to become a player of strategic importance and successfully diversify its economy under its Vision 2030 program. More broadly, the book charts a course for fossil fuel-exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia to carve a competitive position for themselves over the forthcoming decades using clean hydrogen as a catalyst for the energy transition.

With contributions from global energy experts, the chapters in this book provide a multifaceted analysis of the "who," "what," "where," and "why" related to clean hydrogen development within and beyond Saudi Arabia. Collectively, the contributions analyze the countries and regions relevant to Saudi Arabia in terms of dedicated hydrogen policies, projects, and approaches that aim to incentivize production and demand in an increasingly carbon-constrained world. The book is a timely, unique and an indispensable resource for practitioners and students of energy, geopolitics, and climate policy working on hydrogen in academia, applied research, national government bodies, and international organizations.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of economic crimes and market irregularities, including matters of trickery, illicit trade, parallel economy, economies of violence and criminalisation of the poor in neoliberal Africa. It interrogates economic crime as a product of neoliberal reform and transformation (as well as of historical structures). It unpacks crime as a social - and particularly as a political-economic - phenomenon of cap-italism. The book brings together a collection of research articles, briefings and blog posts that were published over a period of nearly 40 years (1986-2023), in the acclaimed journal Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and on its website roape.net.

Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, including a foreword by Yusuf K. Serunkuma and an afterword by Laureen Snider, the volume explores what these eco-nomic crimes have to do with, and can tell us about power, class, accumulation, depend-ency, (under)development, state-business relations and capitalist transformation on the continent. In so doing, it sheds new light on the co-production of these crimes by a range of actors from the realms of economy, politics and international development, including international financial institutions and other donors. It responds to the imperative to advance the analysis of the link between capitalism and crime in Africa as more countries across the continent become fully capitalist societies.

Illustrating the relevance of African cases to debates in and across various disciplines - concerning, for example, corporate and white-collar crimes, state crimes, crimes of the powerful, (il)legality, regulation and social harm - this volume engages with a variety of literature to explain economic crimes as phenomena of global and local capitalism. It provides readers from academia, government, business, media, civil society and education with a striking source of information and analysis.

The overall context of this book is set by the decline of the globalization paradigm's ability to grasp the complexity and uncertainty of the current era. It takes a new approach based on the frame of "transformation" viewed as a catalyst to understand the complex interconnected nature of the world around us from a concrete, grounded perspective. Labour or work is still what makes the world go round, and Latin America offers a unique laboratory of social transformation since the "pink tide" of the 2000s. The left it refers to is a new non-dogmatic version that does not just recycle old debates but, rather, opens up new perspectives. The book is at once global in its ambition while grounded in labour and Latin American realities. Theoretically based and empirically robust, it will enthuse the reader to pursue their own research on matters covered here.

Part I deals with several key debates around labour including the emergence of a precariat, from a standpoint that foregrounds labour agency but also the view from the South, that is, the majority world. Part II takes up various debates around contemporary Latin America from a cultural political economy perspective with an emphasis on the dynamics of social transformation. Part III explores the contributions from the broadly defined left towards an understanding of the current challenges faced by those seeking an alternative to the status quo in Latin America and beyond.

Providing a theoretically sophisticated yet readable text on key contemporary issues, this fully interdisciplinary book will find a broad audience among researchers, scholars, and advanced students of labour, Latin American and development studies, economics, sociology, and politics.

This book is about oil and gas dynamics in the world's newest petro-powers-in-the-making, and the attempts to balance this against the impact of climate change. The known oil reserves in the Guyana-Suriname Basin total some 30 billion barrels equivalent, and the gas reserves exceed 30 trillion cubic feet. This massive offshore discovery amounts to 10 percent of the world's conventional oil, but Guyana and Suriname are also in a wet neighborhood, where the impact of climate change stands to wreak havoc on the area and undermine some of the oil gains. Examining the political economy of petroleum production and some of the myriad challenges and opportunities involved, the expert contributors discuss the global and regional geopolitical and national security ramifications of the petroleum pursuits and explore global climate change dynamics and their effects on the region. This title will be of interest to students, scholars of international political economy, environmental politics, and the Caribbean. It will also be invaluable to policymakers in countries with business investments in Guyana and Suriname, especially in the energy sector, and policy and operational staffs in regional and international organizations and companies.

This book analyses the German constitutional system's responses towards nuclear energy.

Robert Rybski begins with a presentation of energy security as a constitutional value and explores how it connects with nuclear energy. He also examines constitutional standards derived from the German Constitution, which directly regulates nuclear energy issues within the German system of power. The book presents the structure of sources of law that are binding in the area of security of nuclear installations and considers the impact that The European Atomic Energy Community had on the German constitutional system. The final part of the book is devoted to a novel judicial concept of the so-called Restrisiko - a risk that cannot be avoided - which has been developed in the jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court. The essence of this concept is an assumption that as long as the legal framework regulating nuclear energy fulfils conditions formulated in that judgment, then each citizen has to accept risks resulting from the nuclear energy sector.

Covering the entire period of commercial usage of nuclear energy for power generation, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and energy experts who are active in researching or adopting public policies related to the nuclear energy sector.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

In the dynamic realm of agriculture, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) emerge as catalysts for unprecedented transformation and growth. The emergence of big data, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and advanced analytics has opened up new possibilities for farmers to collect and analyze data in real-time, make informed decisions, and increase efficiency. AI and ML are key enablers of data-driven farming, allowing farmers to use algorithms and predictive models to gain insights into crop health, soil quality, weather patterns, and more. Agriculture is an industry that is deeply rooted in tradition, but the landscape is rapidly changing with the emergence of new technologies.

Data-Driven Farming: Harnessing the Power of AI and Machine Learning in Agriculture is a comprehensive guide that explores how the latest advances in technology can help farmers make better decisions and maximize yields. It offers a detailed overview of the intersection of data, AI, and ML in agriculture and offers real-world examples and case studies that demonstrate how these tools can help farmers improve efficiency, reduce waste, and increase profitability. Exploring how AI and ML can be used to achieve sustainable and profitable farming practices, the book provides an introduction to the basics of data-driven farming, including an overview of the key concepts, tools, and technologies. It also discusses the challenges and opportunities facing farmers in today's data-driven landscape. Covering such topics as crop monitoring, weather forecasting, pest management, and soil health management, the book focuses on analyzing data, predicting outcomes, and optimizing decision-making in a range of agricultural contexts.

The book reflects on ways of transcending Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) by establishing a dialogue between the professional experience of the authors and experts from academia and practitioners from financial services and executive search. The book emphasises the link and impact between what is taught and what is learned about EDI and how this reflects on later choices in career and workplace status. The book offers a critical and global perspective, emphasizing the multilocality and intersectionality dimension of diversity and unpicks key insights from different conceptualizations, like class, gender and postcolonialism and their relationship with the current paradigm of diversity and how people identify and communicate. With an extensive collection of testimonies and invitations for reflection, the book doesn't limit the analysis to the influences of historical power relations in the workplace, but investigates at what stage multicultural power structures start developing a compulsory inclination to create "differences" and how this can influence hiring decision making and management in the workplace. In the book, academics and practitioners provide illumination and insights gleaned from their own personal experiences and perspectives. Whilst the research targeted financial services and executive search, the book's findings will appeal globally to individuals of all age groups regardless of educational status, seniority or in which industry they are employed, particularly those who are aware of how each one expresses similarity and differences sometimes in not obvious ways.

This volume expands conversations about participatory, community-engaged, and action-oriented research that inspires social change.

The authors contend that long-term community partnerships, inspired by solidarity and characterized by equality and reciprocity, result in a deep understanding of community concerns and increase the likelihood that research findings will have an impact on both the community partners and the broader society. Such research relationships, the authors maintain, are best understood as accompaniment. This book recognizes the potential as well as constraints of conceptualizing research as accompaniment and emphasizes that this approach is both a continuum and a process.

Suitable for students and scholars of ethnographic and qualitative methods (and professionals using those methods, such as those in non-government organizations), it will appeal to those interested in research with communities in a wide variety of social science and other disciplines, including anthropology, nursing, and public health, amongst others.

This timely Routledge Handbook creates a much-needed space to explore what makes social work uniquely African, as well as shaping, informing, and influencing a new culturally relevant era of social work. The specific focus on social work education offers approaches to transition away from the hegemony of Western literature, knowledge, and practice models underpinning African social work education. The authors identify what is relevant and meaningful to inform, influence, and reconceptualise culturally relevant social work curriculum.

Covering Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, the Handbook comprises both empirical and conceptual chapters, multiple approaches, case studies, and key debates on social work education. It is structured in four parts:

* Approaches to Indigenising, Decolonising and Developing Culturally Relevant Social Work Education

* Social Work Education: Evolution across Contexts

* Embedding Field Practicum into Social Work Education

* Knowledge Exchange between the Global South and Global North.

The range of indigenous, local knowledge that the Handbook presents is crucial to social work evolving and facilitating for reciprocal learning and knowledge exchange between the Global South and Global North. Whilst the context of the Handbook is Africa, the topics covered are relevant to a global audience engaged in social justice work across social work, social welfare, social development, and sustainability.

This handbook highlights innovative and affect-driven feminist dialogues that inspire social work practice, education, and research across the globe. The editors have gathered the many (at times silenced) feminist voices and their allies together in this book which reflects current and contested feminist landscapes through 52 chapters from leading feminist social work scholars from the many branches and movements of feminist thought and practice. The breadth and width of this collection encompasses work from diverse socio-political contexts across the globe including Central and South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, North America, Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.

The book is divided into six parts as follows:

* Decoloniality, Indigeneity and Radical Theorising

* Feminist Social Work in Fields of Practice

* Academy and Feminist Research

* The Politics of Care

* Allyship, Profeminisms and Queer Perspectives

* Social Movements, Engaging with the Environment and the More-than-Human

The above sections present the diverse feminisms that have influenced social work which provides a range of engaging, informative and thought-provoking chapters. These chapters highlight that feminists still face the battle of working towards ending gender-based violence, discrimination, exploitation and oppression, and therefore it is urgent that we feature the many contemporary examples of activism, resistance, best practice and opportunities to emphasise the different ways feminisms remain central to social work knowledge and practice.

It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work and related disciplinary areas including the social and human sciences, global and social politics and policy, human rights, environmental and sustainability programmes, citizenship and women's studies.

This textbook explores recent research on the topics of gender inequalities, intergenerational support, and family in select East Asian societies, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.

East Asian societies have been undergoing rapid economic development over the last three decades, whether gender (couple) relations and families in East Asian societies have also been undergoing transformations remain less clear. The chapters in this book uncover dynamic and evolving couple and intergenerational relationships within families in East Asia, together with the persistent impact on time use, housework and childcare. They provide a rich source for understanding gender dynamics, intergenerational relations, and childbearing and rearing in East Asia, at a time when it is expected that families and gender relations in East Asia will continue to evolve with characteristics of both modern gender egalitarian values and traditional family obligations.

A rare and valuable resource, this textbook will be a key resource for researchers, scholars and practitioners of Sociology, Development Studies, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Comparative studies who wish to study gender and family relations in East Asia, a rapidly developing region with a shared Confucian culture. The chapters in this volume were originally published in Chinese Sociological Review.

Focusing on artists and creators, this shortform book analyses the labour market in the creative economy in the context of cultural policies.

Based on a series of studies involving Polish artists spanning 10 years, the book identifies the key factors needed to understand contemporary labour markets in the creative and cultural sectors worldwide. The authors integrate artists' perspectives to present truly rounded evidence, shedding light on the applicational perspective of the research findings.

Illuminating the socioeconomic status of artists in Poland, this book is essential reading for researchers interested in cultural policy and the creative economy, as well as work and labour studies more broadly. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the creative and cultural industries.

Computational Methods in Finance is a book developed from the author's courses at Columbia University and the Courant Institute of New York University. This self-contained text is designed for graduate students in financial engineering and mathematical finance, as well as practitioners in the financial industry. It will help readers accurately price a vast array of derivatives.

This new edition has been thoroughly revised throughout to bring it up to date with recent developments. It features numerous new exercises and examples, as well as two entirely new chapters on machine learning.

Features

• Explains how to solve complex functional equations through numerical methods
• Includes dozens of challenging exercises
• Suitable as a graduate-level textbook for financial engineering and financial mathematics or as a professional resource for working quants

Statistics Explained, now in its fully revised Fourth Edition, is for students and researchers who wish to understand the statistical analyses used to analyse quantitative (numerical) research data in a wide range of academic disciplines, in particular, the behavioural, human and social sciences.

This book explains, in a clear and informative manner, the logic of statistical analysis, in particular the null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) method. Using this method, a range of statistical tests have been devised for different types of data. Each of these tests is explained in the book by adopting a step-by-step ("walkthrough") approach with a specific illustrative example. Crucially, these explanations do not require the reader to have an advanced knowledge of mathematics or statistics, but only assumes the basic mathematics which most readers will have learnt at high school. The book also examines the criticisms of NHST and introduces the reader to Bayesian statistics. As a result the reader will be able to critically evaluate the outcomes of statistical analysis both of their own work and that of others.

Statistics Explained will be of great interest to students and researchers in the behavioural, human and social sciences in understanding both the outcomes of their own research and also the research reports in the academic journals.

Markets and power in digital capitalism delves into the complex world of modern capitalism, where technology giants reign supreme. From Google and Apple to Amazon and Tencent, these internet behemoths have reshaped the economic landscape, transforming capitalism as we know it.

Philipp Staab takes readers on a thought-provoking journey through the virtual realm, exploring how digital surveillance and evaluation practices have infiltrated every aspect of our lives. What sets digital capitalism apart, he argues, is the rise of 'proprietary markets'. No longer focused on producing goods and selling them for profit, today's meta-platforms thrive by owning and controlling the very markets in which they operate. This raises important questions about power dynamics, market monopolies and the future of economic systems.

With sharp insight and meticulous research, the book sheds light on the intricate workings of our digitised economy. Staab's compelling analysis challenges us to confront the realities of surveillance capitalism and the urgent need to address the inequities it perpetuates.

The immortality of the soul is one of the oldest tropes in the history of philosophy and one that gained significant momentum in 16th-century Europe. But what came before Pietro Pomponazzi and his contemporaries? Through examination of four neglected but central figures, Joanna Papiernik uncovers the rich and varied nature of the afterlife debate in 15th-century Italy.

By engaging with old prints, manuscripts and other archival material, this book reveals just how much interest there was in the question of immortality before the 16th-century boom in Aristotelian translations. In particular, Papiernik sheds light on the treatises of Agostino Dati, Leonardo Nogarola, Antonio degli Agli and Giovanni Canali, all of which have until now been overlooked in modern scholarship. From Dati's critiques of ancient and existing positions to Agli's study of immortality and its relation to the metaphysics of light, this volume investigates not only how wide-ranging the debate was but also the important impact it had on later philosophical thinking.

Deftly combining close reading with a broad intellectual survey, and including two editions of unpublished primary texts, Philosophies of the Afterlife in the Early Italian Renaissance provides a crucial insight into the development of early Renaissance Platonism and philosophy of religion.

This book re-examines how Bonhoeffer employs musical patterns of thought and language to a theological end. It outlines how the significance of Bonhoeffer's musico-theology has not been sufficiently recognised, and sets the stage for a rigorous re-examination. It becomes clear that through the lens of his musical metaphor of polyphony, Bonhoeffer demonstrates how his account of Christian formation contains a latent pneumatology.

Tarassenko demonstrates that incorporation of this pneumatology is key in deepening one's understanding of Bonhoeffer. It allows the relationship between Christology and Christian formation in Bonhoeffer's thought to become fully realised. The appeal to polyphony articulates this pneumatology, as an indirect but nevertheless exceedingly successful means of contouring an account of the Spirit's work.

The edges of cities are increasingly understood as places of dynamism and change, but there is little research on African urban peripheries, the nature of building, growth, investment and decline that is shaping them and how these are lived. This co-authored monograph draws on findings from an extensive comparative study on Ethiopia and South Africa, in conversation with a related study on Ghana. It examines African urban peripheries through a dual focus on the experiences of living in these changing contexts, alongside the logics driving their transformation. Through its conceptualisation and application of five 'logics of periphery', it offers unique, contextually-informed insights into the generic processes shaping urban peripheries, and the variable ways in which these are playing out in contemporary Africa for those living the peripheries.

This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence, thanks to the support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

As a research field, social movement and political project, degrowth is a multi-faceted phenomenon. It brings together a range of practices including alternative forms of living and initiatives of various kinds in civil society, business and the state. Yet no comprehensive theory of degrowth transformations has so far been developed. Deep transformations fills this gap. It develops a theory of degrowth transformations drawing on insights from multiple fields of knowledge, such as political economy, sociology and philosophy. The book offers a holistic perspective that brings into focus transformation processes on various scales and points to various mechanisms that can facilitate degrowth. These for instance include ecosocial policies, transformative initiatives in business and civil society, and alternative modes of being in and relating to the world.

Thanks to the support of Lund University, an electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.