Lecture Notes and Short Texts in Financial Economics

Article from May 2018 on the credit creation theory of banking, explaining credit money and seigniorage in simple terms. It was inspired by a paper issued by the Bank of England in 2018 which "recognises the credit creation theory of banking as a useful theory for understanding the process of money creation".

This page assumes a little prior knowledge of game theory but applies it to the context of investment, introducing the problem of optimal portfolio selection and concepts such as risk premium, volatility and sensitivity analysis. It has been produced by Hossein Arsham of the University of Baltimore.

PDF transcript of a inauguration speech given in 2012, illustrated with cartoons and graphs. Kocken calls for an understanding of risk based on Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis, informed by psychological research on cognitive biases. The file has been taken offline, so this link goes to the Web Archive's copy.

Produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, this website traces the global financial crisis from the subprime mortgage losses in the United States to the wider turbulence in world financial markets. It tracks the policy interventions from a range of mainly US bodies, in response to the crisis. It provides an introduction to the global financial crisis that links to key original source data, rather than second hand commentary. The timeline starts in early 2007 and carries on to 2011, with brief entries outlining the key events and links to relevant press releases, Congressional testimony, financial data, reports and other Internet resources.

This web page discusses an hypothesis and theory of the supply and demand securities and the behaviour of speculators. The document is hyperlinked to glossary terms elsewhere on the Investor Home site and to other sources on the Internet.

PowerPoint presentation depicting decision-making under risk, showing how risk attitudes can be examined using choices among lotteries or willingness to pay for insurances. Shows how risk attitudes can be captured in convexity of the indifference curve or strict concavity of the utility function; and how risk aversion can be quantified by the ratio of second and first derivatives of the utility function, implying that it falls as wealth increases.

Part of the Open Yale website, this course website covers financial markets as taught by Robert Schiller of Yale University in spring 2008. The course strives to offer understanding of the theory of finance and its relation to the history, strengths and imperfections of such institutions as banking, insurance, securities, futures, and other derivatives markets, and the future of these institutions over the next century. The website includes audio, transcripts, syllabus, lecture slides and exams with solutions.

Howard Davies sits on the International advisory councils of the China banking and securities regulatory commissions. In this lecture from October 2008, he is in in conversation with Professor Danny Quah from the LSE. Davies reviews the progress of reform in China’s financial markets, and the implications for the rest of the world. The conversation is available as a 90 minute audio podcast (mp3) with the accompanying website providing speaker notes and PowerPoint slides.

This complete set of materials for teaching income tax has been used in a second year undergraduate microeconomics course for economics specialists at the London School of Economics. The material could also be used in a public finance course. There are 107 Powerpoint slides, a worked example to support the lecture, a class activity involving student presentations (printable instructions for students and for lecturers) and some assessment questions.