Project Finance Portal

The Baker Library at the Harvard Business School (HBS) has created this all-encompassing portal intended to serve as a reference guide for project finance students, faculty, and researchers. The resources on the site are divided into two main sections. The Research and Publications list is directed at the academic community and includes bibliographies of articles, books and book chapters, and trade magazines, as well as … [ Read more ]

Investors all choked up over collars

One of the most popular ways to gauge a company’s health is to mind what corporate insiders are doing. If they’re jumping ship or dumping shares, there’s good reason to worry. But it’s not as easy to track insider bearishness as you might think, thanks to a hedging tactic called the zero-cost collar, a tool that’s saved insiders a boatload of cash while individual investors … [ Read more ]

‘Tis Better to Give—Really

With donor-advised funds, you can avoid capital gains, get a huge income-tax break, and support your favorite cause.

Glossary for Traders

This handy glossary of trading terms is from the News for Traders Website. Trading words and phrases are concisely defined and listed in alphabetical order. Hyperlinks within the definitions lead users to other words in the glossary or to outside sources. The glossary may be browsed, but there is no search feature.

Losing faith in PayPal

Although digital cash was a compelling concept, companies went out of business left and right trying to make it work — until PayPal came along. PayPal’s simplified idea of e-cash didn’t create a separate currency (instead sticking with the good old dollar), and signing up didn’t require any paperwork or credit checks. The service expanded exponentially when eBay users began to adopt it as a … [ Read more ]

There’s Still a Lot of Life Left in These Old Economy Companies

David Komansky, chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch & Co., finds it ironic that the head of a financial services firm gets asked to lecture on the new economy these days. “Our company has been called ‘a relic from the Cro-Magnon era’,” he said during a visit to Wharton. “But because of the patterns that started in the last year, some of the virtues of … [ Read more ]

Now Anyone Can Be a Venture Capitalist

Article discusses the concept of business development corporations (BDCs) and highlights some of the players.

Outrageous Fortune

CommerceNet, a nonprofit booster of e-business, won respect throughout Silicon Valley because it was an honest broker. So how did a few of the group’s executives make millions for themselves? This article explains how and also provides an interesting look at an important historical presence in the development of e-commerce.

Risk and Return: Some New Evidence

The return on the market portfolio plays a central role in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), the financial theory widely used by both academics and practitioners. However, the intertemporal properties of the stock market return are not yet fully understood. In particular, ther is an ongoing debate in the literature about the relationship between market risk and return and the extent to … [ Read more ]

Multilingual Financial Terminology Database

A glossary of over 5000 financial terms in English, German, French and Italian.

Introduction to Options

Online course in options consisting of 6 chapters and a quiz:
1. Comparing Forward, Futures and Options
2. Options Basics
3. Basic Options Pricing
4. Structure and Functioning of an Options Exchange
5. Hedging
6. Trading Strategies

Jointly developed by the International Finance & Commodities Institute (IFCI) and Axone Services & Développement S.A.

The Relationship Between the Federal Funds Rate and the Fed’s Federal Funds Rate Target

ABSTRACT – It is widely believed that the Fed controls the funds rate by altering the degree of pressure in the reserve market through open market operations when it changes its target for the federal funds rate. Recently, however, several economists have suggested that open market operations may not be necessary for controlling the funds rate. Rather, they suggest that the Fed controls the funds … [ Read more ]

Finance Site List

We don’t often post links pages, but this one is pretty impressive and is organized into the following categories:
– Finance Journals
– Institutional Working Paper Sites
– Personal Working Paper Sites
– The Finance Profession
– Research Centers
– Link Collections
– Asset Pricing & Investments
– Derivatives … [ Read more ]

Does the Progressivity of Taxes Matter for Economic Growth?

ABSTRACT: A sizeable literature has argued that the growth effects of changes in flat rate taxes are small. In this paper, we investigate the relatively unexplored area of the growth effect of changes in the tax structure, in particular, in the progressivity of taxes. Considering such a tax reform seems empirically more relevant than considering changes in flat tax rates. We construct a general equilibrium … [ Read more ]

The Dynamic Relationship Between the Federal Funds Rate and the Treasury Bill Rate

ABSTRACT: This article examines empirically the dynamic relationship between two key US money market interest rates – the federal funds rate and the 3-month Treasury bill rate. Using daily data over the period 1974-1999, we show that a long-run no-arbitrage relationship exists between these two rates. This relationship is shown to be remarkably stable across monetary policy regimes of interest rate and monetary aggregate targeting. … [ Read more ]